X-23: Degeneration
by bekeleven
Summary: Wounded by Mystique and drained of her healing factor, Laura must recover from her injuries while saying one step ahead of enemies both new and old. Image by Suppa Rider.
1. Chapter 1

There, at the end of the street. That's where the trail ends, where my path ends. A nondescript warehouse in the north of Queens. Nobody left to help me, but I can walk a single block, I hope. And nobody else will have to die.

I can feel my life leaving, dripping down my arms and legs to the street. Normally I'd be concerned about having to clean that up. A futile gesture, now. Others may at least find it difficult to isolate my blood from the rest coating my body.

Is too much of it mine, or not enough? I've spent so much effort trying to avoid spilling both, but it took until now to see that my intentions never played a part in my life.

I stagger forward, steps uneven. I'm being watched, of course. Hard to smell right now, hard even to see or hear, but there are bodies inside, near the door. And in at least one other building on the street, to my right. Organizations like this take precautions.

"I'm X-23." It once was true, and can be again. Laura Kinney was a beautiful fantasy. I do not understand my emotions very well, but I know this: I loved being her. She had a rocky start and a weak finish, and I don't think she ever met her potential. Blood of James Howlett. Positive impact of Victor Creed.

"Contact Kimura. I have a message for her."

I've almost made it to the warehouse door. My right leg gives out, the fall popping a tooth from my mouth. I pull myself up onto the sidewalk with my hands. The door is only meters away.

This is my destiny. I was, literally, created for it.

"Take me in. I surrender."


	2. Chapter 2

**TWO DAYS EARLIER**

My name is Laura and I'm nearly human.

The status amplifies some experiences. The itching in my forearms, the gentle scrape against my radius and ulna as my bones pivot in their sockets. The pressure on my metatarsal whenever I take a step. Pain in my chest when I bend my spine. These experiences are enhanced. More real.

I enter the diner and process the room. Scents from dozens, although it would take seconds to eliminate those not present and minutes to detangle those wearing similar deodorants and perfumes. Three additional room doors, one an alternate exit, one to a kitchen, and the last receding into the small building—likely to two bathrooms and a closet containing fragrant cleaning supplies. Other exits include windows on three walls and a ceiling barely more than sheet metal. Some of this I picked up walking to the door. The rest I learned striding over to the counter.

Threats in the building, zero. Well, zero to all of me. To a human... maybe four. Probably still zero. Zero real threats, fatal threats, I can at least have that much confidence in myself. But yes. All other diner occupants would be dead nine seconds after I begin, but human Laura would risk injury in the fight.

"Slice of pie." My affected California accent keeps them looking past my appearance, past any inconsistencies I would show. Let them place me in a box in their heads, a cage. "Blueberry if you have it." I pulled out the twenty-two year old 5 dollar bill left on top of the other items in my pocket and placed it on the counter.

I choose an empty table in the corner, giving me vantage over the restaurant to my right and the parking lot and entrance to my left. The night is too dark for reliable reflections in the sparse metallic surfaces fit for specular reflection. No windows are open. I can rely only on hearing to cover the window to my back. But I can't turn around. It could draw attention. At least my hearing is good. It's one of the reasons I'm not _completely_ human.

In my defense, I have no reason to assume anybody is after me. None more than normal, at any rate. I haven't seen anybody yet and I've made it up to northern Virginia. Time to figure out where to go next.

Westchester? Unlikely. It will be run by Frost and hers. An unpleasant group by any measure, and one I've spent a lot time and effort avoiding. I find too many people in the world are cursed with short memories. I am not one of them.

This pie is unpleasant. The crust is mushy and the berries are sour. Perhaps it is too late in the day. Perhaps I only got used to eating sweets because the simple carbohydrates more easily fuel my body. My healing. A rule that no longer applies. Perhaps human Laura dislikes sweets.

The academy? The instructors never warmed to me, even at the end. My classmates were slightly more sympathetic in my best moments, but our sparse communication indicated they more than had their handful with the fallout of our last unwilling adventure. Meanwhile, the publicity of that adventure - that murderworld - told the general public as much as my fellow alumnus about my worst moments.

A woman is staring at me.

170 centimeters tall, 80 centimeters of blond hair, athletic build. Early twenties. Wearing blue jeans and a dirty blue hoodie with the hood down. Mirrored black leather flats that had seen better days. Craning her neck over her shoulder. She's sitting at the counter, near the register, with a clean plate. Conventionally attractive. Something is wrong with the skin around her left eye. Some marks, or damage.

She gets up and walks towards my corner. A sharp, familiar pain in my right hand tells me that on some level I'm panicking. I will the blades back in, hoping nobody is looking underneath the table, and the dull ache remaining reminds me that I'm not what I once was. What I should be. But I need to focus. I'm in a small town diner off the interstate. How could a local know me? Murderworld. Arcade. It is unlikely anybody who knows me from _that_ is looking to pick a fight. The skin within four millimeters of her left eye is cracked and flaking. Underneath is another layer of skin. Makeup?

She is not who she appears to be. I prepare for her arrival. She will cross my ideal engagement range two steps out from the table, where her additional six centimeters of reach are neutralized. I will have to be careful. My knuckles will not heal. I will not heal. I am human. Mortal. _Dying—_

I gag and retch. Sloppy. Fatal. I force my eyes open and throw my left hand across the table to ward off a blow.

"X?" The high note in her voice could denote concern. Maybe it's naturally high pitched. Some flakes of apparent skin fall from around her eye.

"Who are you?" I force words through my throat. It's coming back under my control. I massage it with my right hand, the pain reaching into my chest.

"My name is Paige. Paige Guthrie. You're her, right? After Utopia, I saw the show." She studies my face, and one eyebrow wrinkles in concern, real or affected. "I mean, just a little. I saw a few episodes. Enough to know you."

I have collected myself. I place my hands on the table in front of me, then brace my stomach against its side. She's close enough that I could thrust the table at her. She smells of sweat and perfumed shampoo. Could be a trick, but I _do_ recognize the identity. "Who are you?" My voice stays even.

"Paige. Husk. I was... I was sort of an X-man. I worked with your father at the school."

A C-list mutant capable of peeling her skin to reveal fire. Fire can hurt me. I can kill her. I don't remember enough of her combat patterns. She's... She's good. I saw her around the academy when I went there, years back. Then she worked with Logan. I lost touch with him, after...

Before he died. Far be it from me to tiptoe around such things. "I want nothing to do with Summers or Frost."

"I don't work for them."

I frown. "Who do you work for?" Why is she here for me? She doesn't smell of aggression. What is that emotion, in her scent, on her face? It's so hard to smell the details, with the stench of blood filling my nostrils. Confusion, perhaps, or concern... Has she learned to fake those too?

"I live here, X." She holds up her hands in mock surrender. "Trust me, I never expected to see other mutants in Gordonsville."

I get up. The pie is almost done. "Come outside with me." I don't like the dynamic at play. I don't like the bystanders beginning to stare. I don't like that I didn't initially consider her a threat.

I don't like most things. Accept and adapt. I am leaving a diner in Gordonsville, Virginia with a woman collecting paper napkins. I have been trained to be a killer. I have been trained to be a hero.

I turn around in the parking lot and she stops two paces away. I need a test. "Husk yourself. Now."

"X, I left the school because using my powers… they were messing with my head."

I hold my fist towards her in a pose anybody familiar with Logan will recognize. "Now."

"I can tell you're in pain, you know." She holds out some paper napkins. "For the blood. I'll molt a little if it makes you stop hurting yourself."

I take the napkins and wipe the blood dripping down my arm, keeping my fist pointing in case of sudden movement. She closes her eyes and grabs each hand with a cheek, pulling off a layer of skin that stretches before tearing like latex. Underneath her skin is... another layer of identical skin.

I bend down to grab a scrap of skin. It's real. Raven can't make props like that. "You're Paige Guthrie."

"And _you're_ smiling." She smiled back.

"I..." I looked at my hands. I need to heal, need to fix my body. Need to not die. I need medical attention. I need inspiration. I need a mission.

"I need to sleep. Do you have a bed or floor I can use?"

"Tonight?"

I suspect she feels sorry for me. If her main exposure to me is through Arcade's thirty-part murder world miniseries, she has seen a teen girl kidnapped and forced to kill. She has also seen a teen girl that is bad at killing, whether to my credit or my detriment. Seven of us never left that beach, none due to me.

"Sure. For a night." She points to a silver camry in the next row. The lot contains four other cars; most of the patrons walked. "That's me."

"Excellent." I stride towards the passenger door as she unlocked it. "If I pass out while inside it, you may choose not to move me if you find it easier."

"Why?" She gets into the driver's seat. "You wounds... what's wrong with you, X?"

"That is a rather loaded question."

I've been on my feet for less than twenty minutes since exiting the last vehicle and my chest bandage has soaked through. There must be somebody that can help me. Some organization.

"And please, call me Laura."

There must be _two_ organizations. Because I can think of one... barely... I won't resort to that, not while I still


	3. Chapter 3

While at avengers academy, I interacted briefly with a woman known as Hollow. I say interacted because she could not speak. Her primary emotions seemed to consist of fearing that others would lock her up or use her, stabbing others with various sharp parts of her body, and crying as she regretted all of the stabbing.

It is not a kind thought for me to have, but as I walked away, I felt a bit like Darth Vader leaving a meeting with Dark Helmet. Or perhaps the avengers ending a team-up with Alpha Flight.

I am so much more than those emotions. So much more than reactions and pain. It's sometimes hard to see, but that must be because I am too close to myself. I have ethics, loyalties, drive. I make a difference. I try.

"Welcome to the land of the living." A woman's voice. Paige Guthrie.

I open my eyes. I am laying on a couch in a medium-sized sunlit room. Past my feet I can see an archway into a tiny kitchen with large windows on two sides, and Paige sitting down at a table eating cereal. Her stance suggests we are in her home. My room, the living room, contains two exits plus the windows, which are not reinforced. One threat in the house, although my nose could be missing somebody underneath the scent of blood. _Six seconds to clear._ My shirt is rumpled, and I feel fresh bandages on my chest. My knuckles scabbed over and were probably cleaned at some point.

"Thank you for letting me rest." I sit up and immediately feel dizzy. If my legs can't support my weight, clearing the house would take ten seconds. "I must burn anything with my blood. My DNA is sought after. I'd appreciate your help before I go."

Paige gets up and walks over, even though her bowl of cereal is nearly full, at least judging by the sound as she dipped her spoon earlier. "Laura." She presses on my shoulder and I yield to gravity. "You're hurt. What happened?"

Her touch does _not_ make her an enemy. She touches me out of _concern._ "I was sloppy yesterday in Florida. Messed up." I avert my eyes. "Mystique took my healing factor and stabbed me." I'd made many mistakes. She'd been prepared for my normal approach and I hadn't altered it despite the signs. I'd hesitated before my strike.

"Wow, that's pretty bad." Paige's tone shifts into a lecture. "In my last fight, I got defeated by Toad. After sucker punching him about fifty times." She smiles, but her scent - distinguishable now from her sweetened cereal - indicates gravity. "So maybe you should wait until you're old enough to drink before you worry about defeating the centuries-old head of the brotherhood of evil mutants, hmm?"

"What do you do, Miss Guthrie?"

"Freelance web design. And it's Paige, please, I am _not_ cut out for authority."

"I fight."

Paige looks me up and down. She appears surprised I did not elaborate. "X... Laura, I saw you fight in murder world. You're good, but you're not the best there is."

I can't understand why such a simple statement of fact makes my cheeks burn. A year ago, it wouldn't have. "Then I have failed." It obviously makes no sense that I would be able to single handedly defeat the dregs and leeches of society when I have so much trouble with my own rogue's gallery. "I need to reactivate my healing and resume training."

"What you need is to get to a hospital. I redressed your chest, because of course they teach that in gen X. But hospitals are things normal-bodied people tend to need."

"I do not..." I fight. What is even the point of healing if the body remains broken? "I do not like hospitals."

"Well, there's a clinic in town, but I don't think any nearby docs do house calls. So maybe your body doesn't care what you like."

I sit up in the couch. "Paige Guthrie, you are a better teacher than you think."

She sighs and sits down next to me. Perhaps my deflection is too obvious. "How'd you end up in Gordonsville, anyway?"

"Hitchhiked."

Paige's stance changes. More on edge. I smell sweat and suspicion. "You hitchhiked 600 miles in a day with no wallet?"

Aah. She went through my pockets while I was out. "Relax, Paige. Nobody died."

Paige frowns, then shifts stances. "Laura, can I get you something to eat?"

I may have crossed a line. "Nothing sweet, please. And spicy if you have it." She disappeared into the side of the kitchen not visible from the couch. "And, I'm sorry. I make everybody nervous."

"You're a good kid." Her voice is accompanied by sounds of a stove and the wafting scent of butter burning. "A lot of opinions for someone so stoic, but that ain't bad. Except when they stop you from getting medical care. Doesn't that hurt? A lot?"

"It's a small chest wound." Paige, it seems, can be plenty opinionated without me. "And if I'm going to get strapped to a table and experimented on, I'd at least like to be fixed when it's over."

"Tell me you at least have a plan for that?"

A plan. I need a place where I can get healed, one besides the obvious. There are only so many groups that even have the capacity. The various X-groups were tainted by politics, although if I can appeal to Dr. McCoy alone, it's possible he's forgiven me for X-force. The obvious choice is out, as are similar groups like A.I.M. I avoid S.H.I.E.L.D.

Who's super smart, has access to a lot of resources, won't use me, _and_ owes me a favor?

"I need to get to New York. To the Baxter building."

Paige walks back in, balancing a tray of food in one hand and a tray table in her other. The tray holds a glass of milk, a plate of scrambled eggs, silverware, and a bottle of hot sauce. Fine, and reasonably filling. I haven't eaten a proper meal in at least half a day, and it turns out mostly-human Laura gets hungry mostly as fast.

She sits the table down, and the tray on top with minimal spilling. "Where does this plan place me?"

"I may have trouble walking for extended periods, so if you could drop me off at a rest stop closer to the interstate..."

"Darling, I'm self-employed." Paige cracks her knuckles. "Been spending too much time out of the world. Time for a trip."


	4. Chapter 4

The facility where I was made taught many things. By age nine I was fluent in as many languages and had a diplomat-level understanding of world and corporate politics. Math was a topic less relevant to my work, but I was still proficient in basic calculus by the time I escaped by murdering all of the lab's employees.

Each of my topics was taught in a different manner, with differences subtle to blatant. The facility was in the business of data, after all, and everything was a test of _some_ kind. I was taught some courses with a private tutor working me through word problems, others with a hands-on chemistry set, and still more with nothing but a set of encyclopedias, a quiet room, and a punishment for failure.

At no point during my schooling regimen did any of my teachers bring up any of the topics Paige Guthrie is teaching me now, and none of my courses resembled her instruction style in the least. There is a certain looseness to it, particularly because she doesn't realize these are subjects about which I need to be taught. But I am learning all the same, about both traveling and learning.

"This'll do." Paige signals and pulls into a deli parking lot. "If they have packaged sandwiches, they'll be bad by now. Yet _another_ benefit of resting up and leaving in the morning, mind you." Her voice doesn't contain true anger, not that I can tell. Maybe when we rent a motel room midway through what could've been a day's ride, but for now she is humoring me.

She goes to the counter ( _One employee, no other customers, four seconds to clear_ ) while I make a beeline for the bathrooms off the back hall, which are to their credit cleaner than those at rest stops. I notice while washing my hands that the bandages around my chest are beginning to get wet.

Despite an abundance of schooling on how to apply wounds, I never learned how to dress or wrap them. I do my best with my knowledge of anatomy and observation of Paige's work. She had enough foresight to pack me with fresh bandages. I, in turn, will bag my old bandages for burning.

"Laura!" Paige burst through the door, plastic bag of food in one hand. "I've been looking for you for…"

I stuff the last of the bloody cloth into the bag. "I'm sorry, Paige. I was preoccupied."

"Nice job with the wrapping." She lets the door swing shut behind her. "Are we good to go? Because I'd like to make it a bit further before bunking in."

"I am ready." The scent of her food is subtle underneath the bathroom disinfectant and urine. My reaction to such smells are less extreme than those of others I've met. It's impossible to function effectively if you gag when passing within five meters of a toilet.

The gun fires when I open the door.

I keep my hands still, to keep the door from creaking forward or swinging back on me. The shot was close, a room or two away. The accompanying shouts are from the front room, where I smell the man behind the counter and one other person, a heavy smoker. The volume of their speech would be due partially to hearing damage and partially to fear, or in the other man's case, intimidation. I take a step forward.

Paige lays a hand on my shoulder and shakes her head. "I'm calling the police. Stay here."

Stay? I don't think anybody's been shot - the various meats, combined with the dirty bandages in my bag, make smelling such a thing tricky - but that doesn't mean that can't change. Whoever's out there has already demonstrated a willingness to fire.

"What am I?"

"You are sick, and you are injured," she hisses. "And apparently you have a _death wish."_

More shouts from up front. Demands for speed, predictably. "Not my status. Web designer Page Guthrie, what am I?"

"You're a teen searching for a place to fit in. Trust the teacher telling you it's not uncommon. Don't get yourself killed, Laura."

"I won't." The door shuts in her face as I make my way to the front room.

This is what got me into this mess, I know. Helping even those that would never consider returning the favor. But being a hero isn't a nine to five job. It's an identity. It means you can't ignore the suffering of others.

I've always dealt best in absolutes. A former friend once told me it was what people find so unsettling about me. It was certainly what I liked about her.

The robber is two meters tall, with buzzed black hair and a solid build. Possible southern European descent. Wearing a white undershirt and jeans held up by a studded belt. I have accepted by now that I will never understand fashion. He stands in front of the man at the register, ten feet away.

 _Six seconds to clear._ No, my only target is the robber. _Four seconds to clear._ Can I do it without bending my upper torso? _Five seconds to clear._

Heroes don't kill. Seven… No, he has a solid shot. Nine… Too many possibilities. I must get closer. Reduce the possibility space. Get within striking distance.

I dislike closing without a plan.

"Who the fuck are you?" The robber shouts, waving his gun at me. I drop my bag, raise my hands and walk slowly forward. He _probably_ won't fire. I can confirm now that the cashier is unharmed. There is a bullet hole in the ceiling.

"I don't want any trouble." I advance. Slowly. Deliberately.

"Freeze, bitch!" His eyes are dilated, likely due to some sort of narcotic. Stimulant? Hallucinogen? My knowledge in this area is woefully underdeveloped. I knew hundreds of names and nicknames for drugs as well as their prices in multiple markets, but my courses hadn't yet covered the effect of each on the body. Such knowledge wasn't necessary to support the facility's dealing operations.

"I said freeze!" Incapacitation without claws is a challenge. Giving the man minimal credit, he should be able to roll with a punch he sees coming. I weigh 56 kilos with the adamantium; he probably has 40 kilos on me. A trip, perhaps, combined with blows to the head. Closing distance like this was a mistake. It let me understand my options, but by surrendering the initiative it made those options worse. Much better to stay out of the open, use the nearby shelving units.

"Listen—" The man's shout is interrupted by a rain of ceiling tiles and insulation on his head. In its center is a figure of gray, humanoid, fist down in striking position.

Paige Guthrie, Husk, crashing through the ceiling in a skin of rock. She strikes the man in the face as she falls, and he drops under her without firing a shot.

"What the fuck!" the cashier shouts into the sudden silence.

"Get the bags," Paige orders me in a husky voice, checking the man's vitals. As soon as I collect my bandages and the food she dropped near it, she grabs my arm and pulls me out into the night.

"In the car." She points. I go.

I sit in the passenger seat, watching her out on the sidewalk. First, she rips the stone from her head, each hand on a cheek. It comes off contiguously, almost as a layer of sticky mixed concrete, before crumbling to gravel and scattering to the ground around her. Next she pulls the rock from her hands, then her arms. She reaches into her short sleeves to clean her shoulders and armpits, then lifts her shirt for her torso. She rubs her legs through her jeans and stones tumble out by her ankles, then removes her shoes and socks to restore her feet to skin. Two minutes after beginning, she joins me in the car and starts it up.

"You were able to turn _into_ rock much faster than—"

"Shut up." Paige pulls out into the street and guns it for the interstate. When is she planning to eat the food she bought? It can't all be for me, can it? It smells like sandwiches, tuna fish, pastrami, mayonnaise. Perhaps she got some made fresh while I was in the bathroom. It…

I smell salt. Tears are streaming down Paige's cheeks. She squints a bit, then more, then switches on her right turn signal and pulls over to the shoulder to stop.

"I can't do it, Laura." She rests her head on the steering wheel, her shoulders bobbing up and down with her sobs. "My secondary mutation, it gets in my head, I can't pull it out, I don't know what I'll do, just that I want to do it more and more…"

I have no training for this situation. No knowledge, no instinct, no plan. When I saw others cry, how did those around them attempt to fix them?

I drape my left hand over Paige's shoulder before pulling her into a half-hug over the stickshift.

"I don't want to be that again," she whispers. "But you were going to… Oh, god. Please, Laura. Don't die."

The correct response is obvious. "I won't."

"Don't die."

"I won't." I don't know exactly what my promise will entail, but I'll do it. Ambiguities perplex me, and I can't spend the time or effort for them. Especially not while human. I won't die, not while in Paige's care.

I've spent a long time near the ocean. When I lived in California with Debbie and Megan Kinney, I would spend time sitting on docks, letting the water carry away all of the other smells. I tried it later, when the X-men moved out to Utopia, but it never lifted the rest away. Under the salt was the sweat, and the grime, and the scent of everything else.

I smell salt and watch headlights drive past for eleven minutes and forty seconds before Paige shrugs off my arm and restarts the car.


	5. Chapter 5

"At the time, I was so happy." Paige looks away from the muted TV, displaying some animation about a family of angry cynical people. "Obviously, I had to console her. I mean, she nearly died when she didn't believe the airstream was gone. But I remember thinking, in the back of my mind, if any Guthries lost their powers… Well, glad _I_ made it through M-day intact." She turns back to the TV. According to the subtitles, the baby can talk. "Jeb didn't even care. Had the right idea. The older I get the more I think these things will always come back at you."

"I met Sam, briefly." I grab a third pillow from the bed and stick it behind my head. I'm now sitting nearly upright. "And Jay. Logan gave me to the academy shortly before his death."

"Yep." She nods without looking. "Everyone knows Sam. He's a capital-X X man, TM. Even joined the Avengers a bit back. You were classmates with Jay? I was around the academy some back then."

"Yes. We never spoke. I stood to your right at Jay's vigil."

"Oh, Laura, I'm sorry." She reaches her right hand out to me, but her eyes remain fixed on the screen. "It was a… It was a trying time. I'm sorry for not remembering you. Do you have any family? Besides, you know."

I grab her hand and guide it to my left. "I killed my mother under the influence of my trigger scent, and sent my aunt and cousin into witness protection so that they could not be used against me. Akihiro, my adopted brother and genetic son, is dismembered but stable in a hospital in Daytona."

Paige grins. "Laura, I'm sorry, but you're just too much. Did you kill your Sensei in a duel and never say why?"

"I killed my combat Sensei during a class after the facility raising me placed trigger scent on his blade."

She stifles a chuckle. "And your dog, too, right? You killed that?"

"Yes. The facility threatened to torture my puppy to death unless I ended its life."

"Oh, god, of _course_ they did." She's laughing out loud now. "And you bought a winning lottery ticket from working in the mines, but you had to give it away to keep Scott and Frost from losing Utopia island to the evil tax collector?"

"No." I do not understand her levity. "I gave my savings to my aunt when she went into hiding, and have only worked since as a prostitute. And I have agreed with Miss Frost that, should we see each other again, we will kill each other."

"God, it's too much. It's like you're not even real." She withdraws her hand from me, holding it against her eyes.

"I am real." Of this I am sure. "Mephisto told me that if I lacked a soul, he would have been unable to drag me into hell."

Paige doubles over wheezing and is unable to speak for multiple minutes.

"I'm sorry," she chokes out. "I'm going… I'm…" She gets up and retreats to the bathroom, closing the door, the only way to gain any distance in our tiny motel rental. On the television, the daughter is hitting the father.

Apparently I don't understand humor. I am happy, I suppose, that Paige is happy. She's clearly not the type of person to get joy from the suffering of others: Logan employed her.

These certainly don't _seem_ like things others should find funny. When I have told them to others in the past, I've mostly gotten reactions like "that's horrible," or "I'm sorry," or "nobody should have to have that happen." Which, frankly, I think is fair. None of those were desirable experiences. Except for speaking to Mephisto in hell, which was both pleasant and life-affirming. And I didn't mind helping my relatives escape the reach of the facility, although it came with the price of being unable to ever see them again.

Paige opens the bathroom door, straight-faced, and clears her throat.

"Laura, I'm sorry for laughing at your life. Obviously, I wouldn't wish those experiences on anybody. I just didn't expect anybody to have experienced essentially every bad upbringing cliché by themselves. Especially not somebody who seems so… Well, I respect you, and I… I think you're strong."

The sentiment is not unfamiliar, but it remains welcome. "I forgive you." I pat the other half of the bed. "Your animation is still on."

"Neh, I wasn't really watching it." Paige sits down anyway. "Just tell me you never had to decide which of your two best friends got shot."

I think for a moment and shake my head. "I had to decide whether I or a friend got shot once. I chose myself, got better, and killed the shooters."

"Well, that's a relief." Paige grabs the remote and turns off the television. "Laura, you can't heal now, so don't go risking your life like that again, OK?"

"We saved a life." I move some of the pillows from behind me and lay down.

"We endangered _four_ lives." She turns off the lights. "To save a cash register's worth of money. And probably caused more monetary damage than its contents. Sometimes you have to do the math."

Saying that it was her that caused the damage would probably be counterproductive right now. "My classmates always said I was cold. Too calculating. I have to put myself out there and save good guys, not just punish bad ones."

Paige sighs a long sigh. "Super heroing is a complex business, Laura. I've been it, I've taught it, and my conclusion is it isn't for everybody. As for you, only you can make that decision."

Damn. I'm not very good at making decisions. That was the _point_ of being a student, at least before they graduated me. "What if I want to do something _like_ super heroing?"

"You're shit outta luck. Every variation on vigilante justice is illegal or heavily regulated. We slipped through the cracks thanks to a whole bunch of politics. But you can't just go back to X-force justice, not in reach of S.H.I.E.L.D." For a moment, the only sound is Paige removing her shirt. "Sorry. I made some calls last night. Hank explained a few things to me."

I don't know which _Hank_ she means, but I probably know what she was told. "Three lives."

"What, Laura?"

"Your life was never in danger."

"No." Paige rolls over and pulls the covers up. "Not my life."

Smell is my best sense compared to humans, but only because they have such poor noses. The light coming through our motel room's window is easily enough to illuminate the room. I know I should get some sleep, but after listening to Paige's breathing settle into a rhythm, I glance over.

Paige is laying on her back, closed eyes towards the ceiling. The skin on her cheek is flaking. As I watch, a strip peels itself off, revealing identical skin underneath.

Am I responsible? Did I cause her power to resurge somehow? Or is this just a thing that happens when she sleeps? I'm working off so little information. How much did my little stunt cost Paige? I'm no expert, but she doesn't seem the type to break down crying often.

How do I fix it? I'm a hero. I'm supposed to be a hero. That's what heroes do.

Paige moans and tosses, right hand going almost to her face before settling on top of the sheets. A strip of skin peels off of her neck. There must be some way I can help. Something I can do.

I take Paige's right hand in my left and hold it. Her palm is cold, sweaty. I remain still for approximately forty minutes, although I have no clocks in my field of vision. Paige's skin stops peeling.

Meditation, I've been told, is a path a person takes to find peace. I've tried it before, but I find my mind impossible to quiet. Maybe I did it at the ocean. Maybe I did it listening to my mother read. I'm certainly not doing it now.

Her hand warms. I fall asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

I wake to the smell of gunpowder.

It's not strong. Just a hint, a wisp on the wind. The kind I get when someone fires a gun a block or three away. Or the kind you get when a gun that hasn't been fired recently is in the next room.

I don't sleep through gunshots. I bolt upright and the pain in my chest flushes all fatigue from my system.

I'm alone in the bed. Paige is dressed and sitting at the desk, eating a sandwich out of a wax paper holder with a restaurant logo printed on it. Smells like breaded chicken and mayonnaise, as does the brown paper bag on the desk. She swallows her bite with an audible gulp and chokes out, "Don't get up so sudden, Laura."

"Firearms nearby. I will recon." I throw myself out of bed, then grab the wall to keep from collapsing.

Paige looks me up and down before deciding to take me seriously. "Get into the bathroom, Laura. I'll take a look around."

It's hard for me to argue when she has as much survivability as me and, given her age, almost as many years of combat training. I'm still the better choice: I have Better senses, I know what I'm looking for, she has increased survivability when not ambushed, I am wounded and more expendable to the unit. "No. I'll go." I sit back down. "Give me forty seconds."

"You're not going, Laura." Her voice takes on an odd firmness. Her heartbeat is elevated. She means it.

"Fine then. No recon. Let's sprint for the car. Leave within two minutes, before their ambush is set up."

Paige rolls her eyes. "You know, Laura, the evidence is a bit slim to call the avengers or X-people from out of state but we can always call the cops if we think we're in danger. It's a thing people can do."

"And put them in danger?" What kind of hero does _that_?

"It's their job too, Laura. Unlike us, they get paid for it." She pulls out her phone. "We're in no shape, best man for the job and… Yes, hello. I think somebody with a gun is on the street outside my motel room." I can make out the dispatcher, barely, but he doesn't say anything of interest. "Bristol and… Airport? Uh, he looked…"

"Six foot three," I tell her. She repeats it. "Two hundred and twenty pounds. Short blond hair. Thirty five years old." She relays my description. "Wearing long black robes with a prominent white cross on both front and back. Carrying a black automatic rifle with a scope. Seen talking to somebody not visible from here."

"Two oh three." Our room number. "Paige Guthrie. I'm with a student. Yes, both of us. Thanks. We'll wait. Of course. Thanks so much." She ends the call. "Whose description did I just give? That the purifier uniform?"

"Mac Eldridge." Mostly. "Purifier. Lives within two miles."

"You don't think that description was a bit… specific?" Paige turns on the lights and draws the curtains.

"We can still solve this ourselves." I stretch my arms. "I left out eye color. And altered his statistics by one inch, nineteen pounds and two years." My legs feel fine, but I give them a bit of a stretch as well. Normally I'd be doing more comprehensive body stretches, but I'm trying to avoid unnecessary blood flow through my torso. "The friend was mentioned so that they would arrive in force, and to give us deniability if we find only other assailants."

"What do you smell now?"

Trying to distract me, likely. Our room is sealed, so I'm not getting much new information. I walk to the door, stay behind it, duck, and crack it open. I'm not visible from the outside, and head shots will miss me.

More guns. Lots of sweat. It's not windy, so I can get a good read. Last night when we checked in, there were maybe three people nearby. Now I smell over ten. Nitrocellulose. Multiple gun types.

"Too many. This is not a fight for the local PD."

I case the room while Paige calls the emergency line. "Hello. This is Paige Guthrie, I just called a minute ago. Yes. I wanted to add something to my report. My student and I are mutants. Yes. I think so, yes. No, we've been quiet here. I understand. I'd say. Thank you for understanding. Will do."

It's not very defensible. Rooms on three sides, a front wall with its door and window opening to an outdoor covered walkway. Contains one bed, one desk and chair, one dresser, one wardrobe, one television, one lamp, one bedside table, and one wastebasket. The bathroom contains a bathtub and a sink, with its door the only external access.

Judging by the sounds from last night, the walls are thin. Bullets will penetrate. I place the bedside table, chair, and other loose items by the front wall. The room's larger items I leave. If they have a spotter, they moved closer when we shut the blinds, and would hear me moving a dresser or bed.

There are statistically few approaches anti-mutant militants would take, at least before the expected police response time of six to eleven minutes. If law enforcement called in reinforcements or a PPU… Thirty minutes? Forty? Why did I never learn Pennsylvania's law enforcement structure? Focus and plan for what you know. The safest location is lying down in the bathtub, which still has the toilet between itself and the back of the unit. If we are attacked by a group of over six purifiers, they will infiltrate at least one neighboring room.

"Paige, get into the bathtub."

She looks up from fiddling with her phone, gives me a quick nod, and enters the bathroom. I follow behind and when she climbs in, I lie on top of her. This is necessary contact. I do not shy from it.

"Well." She's whispering. "Now you think we should wait?"

I close the door with my foot. "We wait." If the door is breached I cut through the wall into the next unit. It will take me six seconds and will buy us five seconds. Not a great deal, but what else will I be doing with my time, trapped in the bathroom? There is a chance they have men in that unit, but I think it's below one third.

"Laura, about last night." Somebody in boots runs across the walkway outside of our room. I don't hear them slow.

"I am sorry for placing you in that situation," I whisper back. "I will not ask you to husk."

"Thank you for…" Her voice is a bit strained, with my lying on her in a small tub. She is 170 centimeters, 15 over me, but I am within 10 kilograms due to the adamantium in my limbs. "Thank you for understanding. But if they break in before anybody stops them I'll have to fight them."

As I am, I will lose an engagement with the purifiers. Oh, I can take out at least one, maybe four or five depending on how they engage, but they have range and these walls are too thin to stop rifles.

"You can't husk faster than a bullet," I point out.

"I'm still the teacher." She bends an arm around my neck and pivots around the side of the tub, placing me underneath her. After a moment, I let her. "That means you have to do as I say. You're in my care, Laura. I won't let anything happen to you."

She's made it abundantly clear that she's _not_ a teacher, but of course now it's convenient. Put simply, she's a hero too, but only when she has to be.

"I respect your conviction." This position will make it harder for me to cut through a wall, should I need to. It would be wise for her to husk now, into a form resistant to bullets. Her rock form would probably work. But she, of course, knows this as well as I do. Her staying human is a choice. She would rather risk weapons fire than the mental changes her powers bring.

I do not get nervous easily. But lying down in a bathtub, pinned under a woman who prefers death to effective resistance, likely surrounded by at least one squad of armed, trained assailants, I am _realistic_. Arrival of law enforcement will ignite a firefight, regardless of the force size. Everything will move quickly. I will have to… The floor. Of _course_. I drop us down a level, try not to cut through any pipes… What if they're below us, too? It's not advantageous for them to provide backing fire during an incursion, but they could simply strafe the room from unit 103. Why is being below Paige the safe location?

Why is Paige so calm? "Why are you so calm?"

"I texted a friend of my —"

A stun grenade erupts, somewhere outside, possibly in the parking lot. I throw my hands over my ears and grit my teeth. It's followed by sprays of gunfire.

Then more sprays and two more stun grenades. Paige closes her eyes and hugs me tight. Shouting, an explosion, some sort of electricity arcing at 10 hertz. The battle continues for ten seconds, twenty, then stops short of thirty.

I remove my hands from my ears. Paige is breathing heavily. So am I. Odd, I don't breathe like this when I'm involved in the battle, and that requires a great deal more physical exertion. My hands are shaking. I see these symptoms in others. In _civilians._ I moved past them at age five. Never, after…

A knock at our unit door. "Paige? My name is Avril Kincaid. Agent Johnson sent me. We've taken control of the situation. Mind a debrief?"

S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Paige climbs off of me and out of the bathtub. "Come on, Laura. Let's say hello to our saviors."

"I will stay inside, thank you. You may go."

She raises her eyebrows but exits the bathroom without a word. I stand and ready a counterattack, but she opens the motel door without any further gunfire or shouts. I put the toilet cover down and sit. Best to stay out of sight if I can help it.

Life outside of the facility is complex, overwhelmingly so. So I started making rules early. A few are inclinations I forced upon myself, like thinking twice before telling peers my past. Others are absolute: Protect the Kinneys. Don't kill innocents. Nothing will prevent me from performing them.

One of my earliest was given to me by Steve Rogers, Captain America. He told me to stay away from S.H.I.E.L.D. So I have. By reducing the possibility space of my actions, I can determine my best courses more quickly. It's something that I understand all humans do, but most only implicitly. They call it "rule of thumb" or "bias" or "shortcut." Things they've been told, things they found worked once, things that seemed unpleasant. I find monolithic authorities answerable to nobody unpleasant. My horrible bias against totalitarian control.

Paige is speaking to the woman outside our door. The attackers were members of the sapien league, a group with barely ten percent of the purifier's membership but most of it clustered on the east coast. Most were captured alive. S.H.I.E.L.D. had some injuries, no deaths. The league tracked us after our appearance last night made some local news. More fallout from my mistakes. Well, at least it led to the right people dead and the rest alive. I'm almost tempted to call it a win.

My chest is bleeding, but not much. Just enough I can feel the wetness. I exit the bathroom and skirt around the tiny room's edge to the desk, where Paige left a second chicken sandwich in a bag. I'll apologize later if it's not for me. I haven't eaten in twelve hours. My hands have almost stopped shaking.

I can see a bit through the door. Judging by the distribution of visible S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, there are around thirty in the area. I can't clear it, although that doesn't stop me from trying to figure out a route that would keep me in cover from the most likely placement of snipers and whatever stealth air transport brought the team. Paige is thanking agent Kincaid for her offer but explaining she'd have to find somewhere to leave her car, and even if she did she wouldn't want to leave it alone here after getting a bunch of locals arrested or killed. It's funny, in all of my courses at both Xavier's and Avenger Academy I never took a course on fiscal responsibility or money management. Superheroes are supposed to have quinjets or be able to throw away cars when offered rides. Paige Guthrie works for a living.

Paige thanks the agent and explains, no, Laura has had a tense couple of days and would prefer not to meet new people right now. And yes Daisy has mentioned her. And no she has no word on any new rosters. And yes she'd like a followup. And no and yes and no and yes and all of the other words people say to people that make them do what you want, and even more still, words I understand but I know I'll never get, words to tie meaning in knots, words of those with the superpower of understanding the souls of others.

We'll get to the city before dinner.


	7. Chapter 7

When I was young, I was taught to take an order and think everything through: Execute it perfectly with no margin of error. Then came combat training and some things were best drilled until they were second nature: No thinking required. I let that get the better of me, and after escaping, I spent a long time simply… acting. Moving on instinct. Got me into a lot of bad situations, lost me a lot of winnable fights. But I just couldn't find the motivation to care.

I have not found a full, fulfilling life at either one of those extremes.

But more than that, I don't wish to exist anywhere on the continuum between them. The axis missing here is choice: I went from being ruled by others to being ruled by my basic instincts. If I want that weird, unbearable delight that is actual happiness, I will need to get there on my own. A daunting task. My teachers have provided varying degrees of help, but the nature of our relationship precludes true instruction. One cannot be told how to think for herself. It is a paradox.

"But you want to be a hero."

"I don't know." I open the door and hold it for Paige. "I think so. It's what everybody said. How can you tell?"

The inside of the restaurant is dark, and separated into chambers by walls of rice paper. The tables and benches are hardwood, and the air smells of kimchi. _Four seconds to clear what's visible,_ but judging by the noise and visible customer density, ten to eleven seconds for all the guests. Four to five more for the kitchen.

"Most people, they got a hunch." Paige shrugs and follows me down the stairs. "But you never really know until you spend some time at it."

"Two?" The hostess, a non-native speaker, holds up two fingers.

"Two," agrees Paige, following her through a trabeation in the rice paper and sitting at the indicated table. One other table in this area is occupied, by a Korean couple with a preteen boy. "It can change over time. Some people switch careers after decades, turn their whole lives around."

"I have many options." I sit opposite her. "It was recently argued to me that heroes can do more with their powers if used for humanitarian aid." By a man who was power-mad and unstable, and I ended up accidentally killing, but his initial point seemed sound.

"Really?" She leans back as a server, a young man, places a pair of menus and cups of weak tea on the table. "Gonna be harvesting a lot of wheat with those claws? Every power set's got its uses, Laura. And don't underestimate the psychological factor."

The psychological factor of helping people that hate and fear us? "I took few courses in psychology, Paige, but I don't think the public will be inspired by more mutants."

"Depends on the mutant." She points to something on the menu. "Do you want to share two entrees?"

The menu isn't large, just a list of stews. "No, I'll want spicier food than you. And I know I've gotten rather poor press recently."

"It varies." Our waiter is back. "Beef, medium spice, I guess?"

He looks at me. "Seafood, very spicy." I point at the menu item. He nods, collects the menus and leaves.

"The bulk of it was before your time, Laura, but back in the day Shadowcat was a media darling. Adorable, nonthreatening, friendly. Oh, and hot if you're into that innocent thing." She takes a sip of the tea and makes a face. Evidently it tastes like it smells. "On the other side of the coin we had Wolverine, badass, devil-may-care, unapologetic, unstoppable. Now, your press wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. Your name is out there and not as a villain. If it's what you want, I think you could combine the two."

She probably doesn't mean hero and villain, but rather Logan and Pryde. "I am attractive, Paige." Third parties have verified it. They did not clarify if I was only attractive within a specific domain like Pryde. "But I am not nonthreatening, friendly, or innocent. And I am not _cool_ like Logan is cool. What is my press?"

"Well… Arcade's series." Our waiter brings us a selection of appetizers, including kimchi, soybeans, some sort of spicy cucumber slices, and bean sprouts smelling of garlic. As well as a small bowl containing two whole raw eggs. "The heroes were Anachronism and Reptil, mostly. Sister Grimm was kind of in the running too, but the music foreshadowed her dark turn since episode 1, so people never… You didn't watch it?"

"Why would I want to spend _more_ time on that experience?" Actually, I have a lot of experiences I don't want to spend time reliving. If you don't know what you want to do until you try it, I've managed to narrow down my field already. I don't want to be an X-man, an assassin, a gladiator, a prostitute. "What dark turn?"

"Her betrayal on the last day." It is obvious that Paige lied about how many episodes she watched. "You weren't… I guess you got trigger scented and, uh, fried by then."

Nico seemed kind. A shame. I don't _want_ to kill her, should I see her again. And I don't want to watch Arcade's videos to determine if she has to die. But I suppose the fact that I must prepare for both says something about who I am.

No. I will have to watch it. I will have to learn. But nothing will _force_ me to kill anybody. Should I kill Nico Minoru, it will be because I made that choice. No choice is made for me. No deaths are decided in advance. If I am to be a hero…

"What do _you_ want to do, Paige?"

"I'm getting my head together." She picks at the bean sprouts with her chopsticks. "Not web design. If I didn't develop this… If I could keep my head together, then maybe, yes." She looks up and meets my eyes. "I don't know where I'll be in a year, Laura. Told you I wasn't a teacher."

She wants to be a hero. She can't, but she wants it. Some people with such a desire would twist those in their power into their proxies. Adult manipulation has been a staggeringly constant theme in my life.

Instead, she's done more than any adult I've met to talk to me honestly about the job: The drudgery, the pitfalls, the frustrations. Image, efficacy, motivation. Wheedling _me_ until I give her an answer. Trying to learn what _I_ want, a task even I find frustrating.

"I think you are an excellent teacher."

She blinks several times. "Thank you, but you haven't seen me teach a class. Fifteen kids your age, not a one of them… Well, I'm a web designer now for more than one reason. Got frustrated, angry, molted too much, and things went bad."

She goes back to the bean sprouts. I feel as though I should say something, but the thing I would say has already been rejected. Do I repeat it? State supplementary evidence? Do I want to start an argument over an attempted compliment? There is something I should say, something I'm _supposed_ to say. I know this because others can do it. She cried, and I held her. Held her and watched the traffic. If I can only understand what I am to do…

"Excuse me. I will use the bathroom." Located just past the stairs at the entrance. I rise, then linger at the table. Do I say it?

A compromise. "I meant what I said." I slide past another customer in the hall.

One door for each gender, which hardly seems necessary as the bathroom contains only one toilet, one sink, and the various accessories. I use it. I wash up. I stare into my eyes in the mirror above the sink.

I am no stranger to pain. I've lost limbs. Once, to save a life, I severed my own arm at the wrist. My classmates at the academy liked to use the phrase "Pain tolerance." The conditions under which we can thrive determine those under which we can find comfort. Not that pain is comfortable: It's painful. It's not a sensation that I _welcome_ , and in recent days it's had more psychological effect. But my body and my life have left me no choice but to tolerate it. Even readying my body for a fight stabs me four times, in the webbing between my fingers.

I am less prepared for this type of pain. Paige is broken, and I don't know how to fix her. She needs something, somebody, not me.

I dry my hands and return to our table. On my placemat are two dark metal bowls, hot. One contains rice. The other my stew, still boiling, cooking the egg cracked into it, either by Paige or our waiter.

Paige is on the phone, and does not notice me approach. The other end is staticy, but clearly female. Yes. Agent Kincaid. Telling Paige they don't know who some calls connected to. "Thanks for the heads up," Paige answers, watching me round the table. Agent Kincaid responds by summarizing the the informational intent of the call. "Yes, thanks again, bye."

Paige closes her phone and looks up at me, absently stirring the egg in her own bubbling stew. "I'm happy I'm helping, Laura. I just… I did, I wanted to prove I could. Does that make sense?"

"It does." I mimic her stirring. "You wagered your confidence in me as a test."

Her face wilts as I say the words. Perhaps it was not the correct way to rephrase her intent. "I didn't mean… It was random. Happenstance."

"Thank you." I reach over the table and grab her hand. "Thank you for taking me on this journey. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for saving my life."

She stops stirring her egg, her eyebrows curving upwards towards her nose. "I…"

Extending my arm cramps my chest, so I retract it and go back to my own stirring. The stew will be edible soon.

"I mean what I say," I finish. "So, thank you."

"You're welcome, Laura." A quiver in her voice indicates emotional instability, but none of her skin peels. "And thank you too."


	8. Chapter 8

The city is filled with memories. I lived here, for approximately two years, although never in one place for too long. Brooklyn, Queens, District X. I am absorbed recognizing and cataloging all of the sights, the sounds, the smells I encounter. When I come across smells from those times, even the part of my brain charting the most efficient ways to murder everybody on the street pauses.

I'm in central Manhattan _(twenty six seconds to clear street corner)_. Home of the rich and mighty. I might have some as friends now, and I was here before when visiting, but this scent is from before. When I lived past the sightlines of people like this. With others, like…

"…Aren't all bad. Aren't _most_ bad, when you get right down to…."

"I'm sorry, Paige, I wasn't listening." She stops in the middle of the sidewalk. Judging by the movement of her pupils and eyebrows, I have built a reputation as attentive.

"The X-men." She speaks slowly. "I've lived and worked with them. They're good people. Even Frost, for the most part. She'll follow Scott to the ends of the earth."

"I like some of them." Sooraya, Cessily if she forgives me. Victor. The few that did not begrudge me my duty in Scott's own X-force, mutantkind's wetwork protectors. Animosity not given to squadmates Rahne, Josh, or even our leader Logan. "My first night staying in the Xavier dorms, Frost sent me visions of my dead mother, pleading to know why I murdered her. She then telepathically froze my body during a danger room training exercise as I was being rushed by a two hundred kilogram mutant made of rock. Would you like to know the words she had my mother say?"

"This is all new territory for her. She's been on the hero side for just a little longer than you were, and she was in the hellfire club for a long time before then." Paige dodges past a boy wearing a headset walking the opposite way. "Don't tell her I said the long time thing."

"A few months ago, she threatened to _erase my personality_ using her phoenix powers." My summary simplifies our conversation, yes, but within the bounds of accuracy. "We then agreed we would kill each other should we meet again."

"Laura…" She points to a skyscraper ahead. "We're here."

The Baxter building. Home of Reed Richards, supergenius who owes me a favor. We battled demons - I find myself battling demons disturbingly often - and then I babysat his children, which was both more stressful and more challenging.

"Anyway, on the topic of Emma." Paige swings open the lobby door. "This morning, before you woke up, I was actually on the phone with her." I follow her inside _(six targets, spread out, eleven seconds to clear)_. This air smells funny, too, maybe for the same reason as the workmen and the scaffolding. But not like cleaners or air fresheners, not the sweat or the fresh paint or… "She had a lot to say about you, Laura."

No, this air smells like…

"Trigger scent."

"Huh?" Paige glances over her shoulder at me.

"Run." I turn around. The street? I can see dozens of civilians through the glass lobby wall. But the air doesn't have the trigger. Will it not take? Will it wear off soon enough?

"Protect them!" I slam through the door, shattering its safety glass. Paige stops and lets the shards fall before following. "You have to kill me."

Not long now. I can feel it. The world is darkening, going black.

"I'm sorry, Paige. I'm sorry."

—

" _Why did you just offer me your blood?" Demanded the vampire._

" _I wanted to see if you would kill me," replied the girl._

" _You were testing me?"_

" _Not exactly."_

"Poor Blackbird!" said Pinocchio to the cat. "Why did you kill him?"

"I killed him to teach him a lesson. He talks too much. Next time he will keep his words to himself."

" _No one could understand me," said the queen. "Nor could I relate to them. How could I? I never had a childhood. From the time I could walk, I had to think like an adult, live like an adult, survive amongst adults who only wanted to hurt me while other children were playing with dolls and sleeping in soft beds. Those children I knew were never pushed to the edge of life or death as I was. None understood what we do."_

 _And none should have to, thought the girl. It was a realization she had come to recently, that it was a curse. And another to realize it was uncommon. Others hadn't lived like she lived. That was why she still killed. Why people like the queen before her still condemned her. For all that the queen talked of harsh choices, she hadn't been willing to admit that the girl had made one. To protect the mutants that hated and feared her._

"Well," cried the marionette, angrily this time, "may I know, Mr. Parrot, what amuses you so?"

"I am laughing at those simpletons who believe everything they hear and who allow themselves to be caught so easily in the traps set for them."

"Do you, perhaps, mean me?"

" _You're not nuanced, because you're not human." The girl stood still, healing. Thankfully, her tormentor was perfectly willing to keep talking. "You are exactly what we see on the surface. A cheap wolverine knockoff. A killer."_

 _Her tormentor was made to tell truths._

"I also want to grow a little. Look at me! I have never grown higher than a penny's worth of cheese."

"But you can't grow," answered the fairy.

"Why not?"

"Because marionettes never grow. They are born marionettes, they live marionettes, and they die marionettes."

" _She was supposed to be here to learn how_ not _to kill people."_

 _The girl took a step back at her former leader's tone. Not two months ago the woman had been drugged, tied up, tortured, and transported to the site of her execution. The girl had done her best. The girl had done her best, and the woman was here before her. Angry._

Enraged at not being able to fight the marionette at close quarters, they started to throw all kinds of books at him.

" _Is that genuine emotion?" asked the mistress. "Or just something your masters programmed into you?"_

 _The girl made way as her mistress entered the room. The woman studiously ignored her accommodation._

"How shall I ever face my good little fairy? What will she say when she sees me? Will she forgive this last trick of mine? I am sure she won't. Oh, no, she won't. And I deserve it, as usual! For I am a rascal, fine on promises which I never keep!"

" _She has two things we'll never get back: Hope and innocence." The brute pinned the girl to the trunk of the tree with an elbow against her neck. She shivered in the cold. "She's who we save. She's why we risk our lives. She's who we die for."_

 _The sage pulled the brute away. The girl slumped against the tree, her throat repairing the damage. He was supposed to teach her. Not attack her. He was her father. He was supposed to treasure her._

" _She's more important than you or me. Our lives are worth_ nothing _compared to hers. You hear me?"_

 _He was her father. He didn't wait for an answer._

"If I had only had a bit of heart, I should never have abandoned that good Fairy, who loved me so well and who has been so kind to me! And by this time, I should no longer be a marionette. I should have become a real boy, like all these friends of mine!"

" _Are you afraid?" Asked the man as he maneuvered the clamps. His voice was muffled under his surgical mask, but the girl had plenty of practice listening. "Do you feel, Weapon X?"_

 _She was strapped down to the operating table at six points on her body, but that hardly mattered. She had been ordered to stay still._

"After buying me, you brought me here to kill me. But feeling sorry for me, you tied a stone to my neck and threw me to the bottom of the sea. That was very good and kind of you to want me to suffer as little as possible and I shall remember you always."

" _It doesn't matter if the chains fall away, you'll put them on again." The spirit's tone was conversational. "First, the men who created you. Then, the pimp. Later, the X-men."_

 _I chose to join them, thought the girl, remembering with perfect clarity her father's anger and demands._ They need you _, he said._ And more importantly, you need them _._

 _Her father agreed with the spirit that far: They both told her she needed_ somebody _._

" _Now, me. You never left the cage. You never will."_

"He was my friend."

"Your friend?"

"A classmate of mine."

" _Jones on the east side! He knows!" The barrel of the girl's gun almost slipped across the informant's sweaty forehead. "Please don't kill me, I don't know anything!"_

 _His voice and scent corroborated him. "I believe you." The girl pulled the trigger._

 _The knight popped the gun from her hands. With his powers, it was easy. As trivial as giving it had been, not twenty seconds before. "Why did you do that!" His voice raised in volume and pitch. He was angry that she killed._

 _But his powers were growing without limit. He could defeat the whole organization alone if he had to. Pointy sticks and a hardy constitution were nothing compared to manipulation of matter._

 _Which is why claws weren't the girl's power. Her power was the ability to pull the trigger. The knight had to scold her, insult her, demean her for it. Because that was who he was. And he had to keep her along for the same reason he gave her the gun. Because he knew who she was in turn._

"I remember everything," cried Pinocchio.

" _It's too much." The teacher threw back her head and laughed. "It's like you're not even real."_

—

I am on the ground, a figure of fire above me. _One second to clear_. My claws are out, all six. The flaming being above me is covered in shallow cuts, mostly on the arms. In addition to my claw exit wounds, I have bruising around my midsection, burns on both hands, and other scattered impairments.

Above me stands Paige, a foot on either side of my waist. She's husked into a magma form. We are fighting.

"Paige, I'm back." One of my teeth is loose, and I seem to have bit my tongue. The words are sloppy but understandable.

"Have to kill." Paige's voice in this form is deep, her speech slurred. She bends down and punches. I roll over, into her right leg, and her fist cracks the pavement next to my head.

"It's me!" _One second to clear._ "Stop!" I roll under her legs and spring to my feet, but I pop something in my chest and fall back to the ground. I hadn't noticed it lurking, under the pain of my other injuries. The block is empty of pedestrians. Siren wails grow louder on the wind.

Paige doesn't say anything this time, just swings another fist into the back of my leg. I yelp and roll away again. Not sure I can stand now if I want to.

She needs to _stop._ I am human. I am dying. Her husks, her brain… How much do they change? How do I fix her?

 _One second to clear._ "Please, Paige. Please don't." I crawl away as best I can. I'm trained in many forms of… Need to escape. _One second to clear._ I retract my foot claws, which make it hard to maneuver on the ground. It shouldn't hurt any more than normal, but everything hurts when human. My shoes are already damp with my blood.

"Have to kill," she repeats. "Sorry." She strips from fire to rock in an instant and tries for a kick. I block with my claws but my whole arm is pressed back into my chest, and I cut twin shallow lines across myself. She's durable. She hates to use her powers. Using them once opened the door to more. How many times did she husk while I was out? How far gone…

I won't be able to harm her unless I put some momentum behind my strikes. Momentum that will leave me vulnerable, unbalanced. _Two seconds to clear._ The tears in my eyes make it hard to see. _Three seconds to clear_. My erratic breathing will be an obstacle, but not one that increases my timetable.

"Paige, stop. Please. Please." _Three seconds to clear._

She leans down for another punch. I dodge it, mostly, although her rocky fist scrapes across my left ear. Then I throw my arm around hers and hold tight. _Two seconds to clear._

"Please. Please don't." _One second to clear._

"Have to k—" She stands back up, lifting me with her, and my right fist finds a home in her sternum. _Zero seconds._

She topples over backwards, pulling me with her. We land with a crunch of gravel. She begins to rumble, rocks falling from her body, starting around my fist and working outwards in a circle. A circle of skin. Of Paige Guthrie.

It reveals her face, and she looks down at me. I feel a hand on my back and stones as she hugs me. "Laura," she whispers.

The rumble comes from her hands and legs, then her legs, then her feet. Then it's gone, along with her breath.

"Paige?"

I retract my claws. Why didn't I retract them earlier, when

"Paige?"

Why didn't I

"Paige?"

I climb to my knees, shrugging her arm from my back. I am not one for sentiment. I know what I did. There is no need to belabor my actions any further.

The sirens grow louder as I test out my legs. They support my weight, barely. I climb to my feet and hobble towards a side street.

ᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ʙᴏᴏᴋ ᴏɴᴇ: ᴘᴀɪɢᴇ


	9. Chapter 9

I have, when appropriate, been practicing grief. To others, it comes as naturally as breathing. Grief was one of many emotions my handlers removed from me as I grew. Rediscovering it is not _fun_ , more… informative. Healthy, I hope.

Right now, I cannot spend time on it. I have more immediate health concerns. Most police departments will fire when they realize they can't disarm me of my deadly weapons. The rest will bring me to S.H.I.E.L.D.

The trigger was a diffuse dose, probably circulated through the lobby air for hours, enough to keep me under for maybe one minute. There's a good chance I can catch the source of the person I smelled earlier. In a high-traffic area like this, scents mean recent. The crowd's panic fades after a block, and while plenty of people notice my condition, it's not the new yorker's way to comment on it. The sirens still grow louder, but that doesn't make late afternoon traffic any lighter. I am not calculating the deaths of those around me. Perhaps that is grief, an expression thereof.

Let them track me by blood trail. Let them piece it all together. I need to be gone, gone now. Gone to…

There, smoking on the street corner. I lay a bloody hand on her shoulder. She yelps and turns around. "The fuck?!"

"I need to run." I hold back gravity and remain upright. "You said, if I ever needed to run."

Recognition dawns in Kiden Nixon's blue eyes. Naturally brown hair, 160 centimeters, 45 kilograms. Dressed, unusually, in a navy blue suit and carrying a pocketbook under one arm. "Run to me." She looks me up and down. "What happened?"

"I killed. I am dying."

She nods, steps back, and takes a deep breath. Some are staring at us. Kiden drops her cigarette to rub her hands together, then takes my left in her right. Smart to choose my less bloody hand. I try not to shy from her touch.

When she takes my hand the world stops.

I do not mean this in a romantic way, although Kiden is attractive and my second ever friend. Kiden's mutation is the ability to stop time, and now time is stopped for me as well.

"Need a hospital? Don't touch nobody."

"Police there would arrest me." She leads me through the crowds. "I am looking elsewhere." Help me, maybe. I could always die more slowly.

"Yeah, tell me about it." She stops when I stumble, tightening her grip. I don't know what happens when I let go. I don't want to let go. "That's why I'm Kitty Nicks, administrative assistant to the stars. Kiden's wanted for, like, fifty things."

"Kitty?" My steps are sloppy, but my condition is not perceptibly worsening. I have stopped bleeding. I don't understand why.

"Yeah, I'm Kitty. We the X-men now." I suppose my ban on X-relations will have to take a backseat to Kiden's jokes. "I'm bringing you back to my X-Cave. What happened?"

"A friend. She had a power that made it hard for her to reason. I was made to attack her. She used it."

"Well, ya look like shit." Kiden turns around when a knot of people makes our current path impassable. "Let's just keep in No Time for a dime while I figure out what to do with you. Not gonna go off on me?"

I shake my head. "Our location was known to the sapien league. And we also told S.H.I.E.L.D. our destination. Somebody laid a trap for us there." I'd watched for followers as much as normal, but failed to check the car for trackers. Did S.H.I.E.L.D? Were they the ones that gave us up? Why would it even matter now? "Am I dying?"

"Body's in stasis in No Time. No food, no tired, no bleed." She steers away from a wall of pedestrians and brings me into the street. "Touching someone ends it. Don't let goa my hand now, 'less you like tire tracks."

We walk down the center of the street in silence. We're moving towards queens. "There is no X-Cave."

She stops and turns around. I tighten my grip on her hand. "No X-Cave?"

I nod. "The X-men don't have an X-cave." There used to be tunnels under the mansion, but it's been torn down and rebuilt so many times that I have no idea what's there now.

"Fine then. I'm bringing you to my X-Man Man-Cave, located in the illustrious Jackson Heights, staffed by my fellow X-men Rob, Anna, and Li'l Jeff Nicks."

I step past her. I know the way to Jackson Heights, and leading at my pace will be more comfortable than following at hers. "Bobby, Tatiana, and…"

"Li'l Bro. And I'm about to tell you the stupidest thing ever." Kiden appears to have forgotten about details like my impending death. Perhaps whatever necessitated her own change in identity makes her blase about my troubles. "Officially, I'm married to Bobby. And Tatiana and Bro are our kids."

I raise an eyebrow. "Are you even eighteen?"

"Hey, I got twenty months on her, and probably another two years I been frozen. Heard you were in some psycho's murder game."

"I got out." Most of me, at any rate. We reach the Queensborough bridge.

"You got out _changed_." Kiden stops and pokes my nose with a finger. I shy back, tightening my hand on hers to consciously counteract my urge to let go. "The first week I knew you, you killed like twenty guys. And now you broken up about one. Listen, I'm sad bout your friend, I am, but I'm happy for _you."_

I nod. I can't be happy the way she can. A genetic deficiency, from what I've seen of my family. Not many smiles. But I nod with her. The better that she is happy.

"Ok. Let's keep going."

"What happens when we arrive?"

"Bobby and Ana will be there. We'll talk. You can stay with us if you want, but uh…" She leers at my bust, somewhat less attractive with twin lines scored through it. "You might have to be the mom."

It is a kind offer. An apartment in Jackson heights, at least one apparently full-time manhattan job, It's clear that Kiden and Bobby have their lives in order. There is only one problem. "But I am dying."

"Sure, but then I unfreeze and…" Kiden stops. "Wait, are you..."

I shake my head. "I can't heal, Kiden. Not anymore."

"But you survived the atomic murdersplosion on the thing!" Kiden shouts. She waves her left hand in the air for emphasis. "Last time I met you you fell off a 20-story building!"

The last day of Arcade's murderworld had been rather trying for me. And the building had been 13 stories. And _falling_ often implies lack of intention, especially when contrasted with words like _jumping_. "I lost it. Two days ago. I got involved in…" There is no point in going into it. "Matters above my pay grade. Now I am dying."

"Well, shit! I thought it just, just paused when… How do we fix it?"

"How long can you maintain this?"

She looks down Northern Boulevard. "I can keep myself no problem, but with two… Hour? Two or three tops."

Not enough time to get us out of the city. Not enough time to seek out better solutions. I will have to resort to a hospital, get arrested and lose everything, or be shot.

I analyze my body. I have already grown weak, clumsy, and I believe this feeling is classified as _lightheaded._ I will pass out within 5 minutes of activity or perhaps 15 minutes of rest. I lack sensation in my hands, particularly my right, and my right leg is likely suffering nerve damage. I have broken two fingers and at least one toe.

"Who will be at the Man-Cave?"

Kiden checks her watch, which is still running, meaning it is inaccurate. "Uh… probably everyone. Unless Bobby or Ana are shopping."

I nod. "Let's go there."

She starts back up, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

With Kiden's help, fifteen minutes will be enough. To do what I need, make a new plan, and leave before I somehow cause her death too.


	10. Chapter 10

I have spent a long time attempting to understand life. Now that my life is not actively threatened but instead merely leaking from holes in my skin, my thoughts go back to meaning and insight. It's a disaster.

"How soon until you will be ready to re-freeze?" Focus on the subject at hand. I can prevent my death. I must be intelligent. I must be focused like a surgical laser. I must not waver.

Kiden closes the door behind us. "Like ten seconds just me. You, gimme two minutes and I'm up for another hour maybe." Fascinating how restarting time doesn't cause moved objects to explode with the velocity we've imparted. I understand how her powers work, more or less, but not _why_ they work that way. "No promises on that."

She may need more than two minutes. For this to work, I will need to impose quite a bit. I don't…

I know that souls exist. I know that an afterlife exists. I know that somewhere there is, if not a continuation, a conclusion to this world. I know not if karma is real, if the future holds rewards. If the finale is worth the price of admission.

We are inside the apartment Kiden shares with her group. Bro, Jeff, is at the kitchen table sitting down, looking at the door. One hundred and forty centimeters, forty kilograms, ten centimeter black afro, brown eyes, loose fitting T-shirt. Bobby is standing next to him, reaching into their pantry. One hundred and ninety five centimeters, one hundred and five kilograms, black dreadlocks, brown eyes, white T-shirt, blue hoodie, dog tags that aren't originally his. Smells don't seem to function in our current frozen state, and there is nothing to hear, so I will assume Tatiana is in another room. The apartment is large enough for two bedrooms.

"I'm going to stop now. OK? You think it's the freezing that's weird but trust me the starting again throws me more. Aaaaand…" She reaches for Bobby's arm. The world unsticks and we are surrounded by sounds, by smells, by motion. Dust moves through the air. "Action!"

"Whoa! Hey." Bobby nods to Kiden before focusing on me. "That Laura? What happened to her?"

I have died, and been brought back by demons. I do not know why such gifts have been given me. They kill me, they revive me. I have been a skeleton. I have been dust. I remember nothing from such excursions beyond.

"I was in a fight. I need help." I collapse into the nearest chair. Bro looks at me. He _is_ improving. He didn't respond to any external stimuli the first time I saw him.

"Thought you healed from stuff."

"There's a lot of that going around," I agree. I don't hear any sound indicating other occupants. Tatiana is not here.

"Let me guess… I should see the other guy?"

"You would not want to."

"Her friend," Kiden pours herself a glass of milk. "Mind control or something. She can't heal."

I have killed hundreds of people. Most of my targets were evil, if such a thing exists. I was usually ordered to minimize non-target deaths. Just those who were unavoidable, those who risked their lives in evil's defense.

But there were exceptions. Plenty. From the beginning, until now. My first kill to… Can this please be my last?

"Bro." His eyes meet mine. "Is Reed Richards available?" There was scaffolding in the lobby. They were painting. An activity commonly performed when the bosses are absent for extended periods.

He looks up at the ceiling. Of course. Why _wouldn't_ the man I trust to save my life be in outer space?

"Bro." Bobby looks as though he wants to interrupt my interrogation, but decides against it. I am leaning heavily on their kitchen table. They will have to clean the blood later. "Is there any second person or group that I can go to that will heal me?"

He maintains eye contact. I feel emboldened. This is not my area of expertise, but I feel confident my interpretations are accurate. It's like interacting with an animal, almost. They have limited responses to limited stimuli, whereas from what I can tell, Bro does not work quite on that axis. He seems to have limited interaction due to the incredible wealth of stimulation he experiences. I do not know what one would _call_ his mutant ability, but there is more going on with it than I can know.

I am no great mind, not a genius, not a prophet. As a mortal, as a child, there is so much in the world I can but hope to understand.

"Are there two?"

He looks down.

If there is no free will, if we are all puppets, then nothing I do or feel has any ultimate meaning. However, if all of my actions have been my choice, then I am so lost it seems pointless to draw further breath.

I would like to find a life between these two extremes. I don't know how. Whatever I'm searching for keeps getting further away.

So I will take the one option that I have. "Will you be able to guide me there?"

A series of butterflies and geometric shapes appear in the air, glowing, translucent. The first pops in above my head, then another a foot away, and another halfway through the front door. I have no doubt they will lead me where I need to go.

I test my limbs. "Kiden, will you be able to freeze three? Bobby, will you be able to carry me a ways? You won't get tired." I think my limbs will still support my weight, but there are a lot of places in the city I won't be able to walk to quickly. "I am sorry to impose like this."

Kiden finishes her milk and grabs my left hand. Bobby steps around the table to us. "Of course, Laura. I'm sorry about your friend." I relax my muscles as he picks me up.

I knew that my life is not worth hers. And I can tell myself all I want that I made her a promise. But when the time came…

"I just didn't want to die."


	11. Chapter 11

_"Take me in. I surrender."_


	12. Chapter 12

I rate this captivity a B minus.

Ninety seconds into consciousness, I identify all of the usual amenities. I'm strapped to a metal slab, immobilized; I probably couldn't move even in good health. My room is sterile, bare, and smells acrid. The only light is from a fixture directly above my head, which they've helpfully blocked off on either side to prevent me from looking away. I've been given a catheter, and stripped for that extra dehumanizing touch.

But this is the _facility_. They made me. They raised me. After making me kill so many people, making me kill my mother… Others… They'll have to do better than this, for sure. This is just baseline. I half-expected an iron maiden.

I'm not bleeding out, but I'm not fixed. An IV connects to my right arm. A second tooth remains loose in my mouth. My right thigh still tingles. My limbs are weak. The only thing covering my body is bandages. Whole hosts of pains course through every limb, and the rest of me too for good measure.

My healing is off to a bad start.

I lay still. How long until my wounds heal naturally? What damage would be permanent? Will the harsh lighting cause vision damage even through closed eyes? What will I say when they finally speak to me? How many different paths can such a conversation take? After maybe three hours: How long until I starve? Am I experiencing symptoms of hypothermia?

The room is sealed tight, with ventilation ducts in the walls near the ceiling. Occasionally I hear faint footsteps from somewhere past my feet, presumably a hallway with a connecting door.

Yes. At around five hours in - estimating time is rather difficult with no external queues - the door opens, and I open my eyes. "Gooooooood mooooorrrnnnniiiinnnnng!" sings Kimura, dancing into view. "Hello, X!" She leans in close to my face, smile plastered across her own. "I heard you wanted to see me?" She is pretty tall, has long hair, and is mean.

"Kimura, I have a proposal where we both geAAAAAAAAH." She stabs a knife into my right leg. I silence my scream and bite my lip.

"I'm sorry. You were saying something? A proposal?" Kimura's grin widens. Yes, this is more what I expected when I came here. B plus already.

"A proposal where we both get what we want. I'll work for yoooooo-" I shut my mouth. She twists the knife in my leg. The injury, the damage that I'm taking is _real_ now. Permanent. I can no longer recall my planned speech.

"You were going to work for me anyway, cripple. Well, if we can fix you. And we _decide_ to fix you. If not…" She twists the knife more. I clench my jaw hard enough to pop my loose tooth out.

"No… escaping." My speech is erratic, my words slurred. "One… condition… simple." I'm tensing every muscle in my arms and face. I can't lose too much blood. I must remain cogent, convincing.

Kimura stops, looking bored. "Say it then."

I blink, collecting my thoughts. Part of my brain, some part I try to ignore, is still trying to calculate how I escape and kill her. "Over eighty five percent of the missions I went on had criminal targets. I'll do everything you ask if you don't send me on the other fourteen. Killing me makes me a sunk cost, while brainwashing me sets my efficacy back yyeeaAA-"

"I don't know," she muses, slicing down my leg. "I kind of like you this way."

Kimura is nothing if not consistent. I don't know if she values inflicting pain over profit and success in life, but I am sure it's a question she asks herself.

"Boss," I choke out between moans. "Your…"

"I run things here. Superiors kept getting in my way. Kind of the opposite of what's supposed to happen, right?" She reverses the knife, running it back up a parallel track, scraping my bone. "Bosses are there to help their subordinates along. Encourage them. Improve them." She digs a finger into my flesh and begins separating the strip she cut out of me. "Lift them up, not push them down."

Kimura regards the piece of leg in her hand. "I know I told you I'd eat your brains last time we met, but honestly? They taste like shit." She turns to the door. "Tourniquet!"

Pain, death. I've given so much of both. Then, when it most counted, I was too cowardly to take them myself.

This is right. This is what I should be. An armed guard cinches something tight around my upper thigh. Without further medical treatment, I will lose my whole leg and also likely die from shock.

"Let me tell you what your life will be." Kimura checks her watch, then drops my flesh and applies my blood like lipstick. "I'll send you on whatever missions I want, and you'll do them. And you'll come back every time, because I'm going to make your healing temporary."

She leans in closer to my head, running her bloody hand up from my leg to my neck as she does so, then kisses me on the cheek.

"You're just too adorable like this, X. Never change."

She's wrong.

Kimura leaves, the guard trailing behind like a puppy. I know she's wrong. I will not take innocent lives for her.

Blood drips down my cheek. I know she's wrong. I don't value my own life highly enough to compromise my soul for it.

I know she's wrong. As my eyelids droop and my skin sags, I know she's wrong. I don't know why I know this, after I killed somebody for trying to help me, just because they did what I told them to. I don't know how or why she's wrong. But she must be wrong.

I knew from a young age that life was unfair. Despite my near-perfect memory, I made myself forget. It's the only explanation. Why else would the thought go through my mind: "The world can't be this cruel, can it?"


	13. Chapter 13

I do not enjoy the next few days.

 _A eulogy, for Paige Guthrie: Paige, I saw you in Westchester a lifetime ago, has it really been under two years? You were nobody, the sibling of my classmate who was manipulated into helping a villain destroy us. I stood silent at his wake, listening to Katherine Pryde speak memories and loss. Such words would never come easily to me. Few do._

 _But there is so much of you that deserves to be said. Your kindness? Your encouragement? I don't know how to phrase these qualities in ways that aren't hollow and generic. You meant something to me. "Be at peace," Ms. Pryde begged the soul of your brother. You deserve it, I know._

I have an uncommonly good memory, thanks to practice, mnemonic tricks, and long periods spent alone. Unfortunately, it does lead me to remembering events with little to no redeeming value. There is value in suffering: Empathy, lessons learned. These do not apply to being tortured in a lab.

Which is to say, I have a large contextual dataset for my current experiences. I was once described as catnip for mad scientists. I'm probably one of the experts on getting tortured near to death, given the billions of people without the physical durability to survive a meaningful fraction of what I've endured.

But I'm not going to rate them. They're all bad. They share plenty: Physical pain, sleep deprivation, occasional verbal abuse, taunting, existential dread in varying measures. And each has its own spice, its own twist that makes it unique. Sometimes more than one.

My current predicament has two. The first is that I killed Paige, which serves as a helpful enough analog for my actions in toto. She tried to help. Took time off of work, traveled hundreds of miles. Saved my life, more than once. Protected others from me. Cared for me. I severed her left brachiocephalic vein and carotid artery. The blow is supposed to incapacitate instantly and kill within thirty seconds. She stopped breathing in maybe fourteen.

The second is that I came here by choice. Because I chose not to die, yes. But also because of my pride. I knew Kimura wouldn't kill me, and I chose that measure of control over the randomness of entering a hospital and seeing if I'm gunned down. I even chose this path over appealing to the X-Men. Because of Emma Frost.

Undergoing open heart surgery with a strap of leather between my teeth, Emma Frost doesn't seem so bad.

 _A eulogy, for James Howlett: The day that you adopted me was the best day of my life. That is what I would like to hold onto. Yes, you never knew what to do with me. Left me behind when you left the mansion, threw me into the student body after warning them I might kill them, justified my inclusion in X-Force with a revolving door of rationalizations I doubt you ever believed. Avoided me after, as though ashamed._

 _Logan, you were so many things to so many people, even with your long lifetime taken into account. A brigand, a drunk, a samurai. I think those that know you as I do would not wish peace for you. Peace was never your pace. You need adventure. Wherever you are, I hope you find it._

The real kick in the teeth, of course, is the combination of the two. If I hadn't ended Paige Guthrie's life, she would have ended mine. Two problems solved, and I wouldn't be here now. There _is_ some form of soul, something that survives the body. That's most likely preferable to this. A blank nothingness is, well, competing with the standard existential dread of torture. My healing factor can regrow limbs. If Kimura wants, she can cut me down to size between missions and keep me in a box.

The surgeons requested sedation, and Kimura was generous enough to compromise with them, giving me some sort of relaxant to keep my body from thrashing at the pain. I am still awake, and still rather conscious, and I can only assume the dosage was correct as my heart continues to pump. I spend all my effort attempting to bite down on the leather strap between my teeth, which barely presses on it. I understand that point of the bit is to distract, meaning my jaw need not actually move for it to work. I do not know what they hope to discover in my heart that can undo Siphon's damage to my gene expression. I hope they find it.

I still don't intend to produce an exhaustive listing, but this the most pain I've ever experienced. My mind is telling me to give in, to surrender. Why would I? Nothing would change.

There are many ways to experience pain. I try once more to meditate. The Buddhist philosophy is to accept the pain, let it wash over you. Despite my time spent alone, I never seem to improve. My brain's always whirring. Even now it's trying to figure out how to kill all my surgeons and surgical assistants without any muscle control. It's going poorly.

 _For the fallen Laura Kinney: You tried. You tried so hard. I don't normally prize effort without consequence, but I find myself respecting your conviction. One day of wavering can't entirely erase years of repentance._

 _Laura, you never got it. The mysterious last ingredient that makes people, for lack of a more inclusive word, human. The one that makes people not see death in your eyes, that lets them turn their back on you without shivering. The one that lets you lie down on the couch when a classmate enters the room, eyes closed, and just experience their proximity. The one that lets you form relationships based on more than pity._

 _But for it all, you kept trying. You did whatever they asked, and it was the wrong thing every time, but still you tried. It's for that, for you, that I'll draw my one last line in the sand._

Even Logan agreed that killing is what I do. It's in my blood. But I will not kill innocents for Kimura. Only those that deserve it. Only people like me.


	14. Chapter 14

I don't know how long for, but I'm no longer human. I refer to more than my views on identity. No, my body has begun knitting itself back together.

I regain consciousness strapped vertically to a rectangular frame, held upright and spread in four directions with metal binders around my wrists and ankles. The second thing I notice, after the healing, is the cold. I have been moved to another facility. Or a colder wing of the facility. Or perhaps Kimura lowered the temperature just for me. The frame is being wheeled down a nondescript white hallway by two guards wearing visored helms. I know better than to speak. I am still nude.

My chest is substantially healed, the pain receding to the level of discomfort I felt while with Paige. My leg will need more time. Large-scale wounds have taken me hours or even days in the past, and my abilities might not be working at the correct speed. My superficial injuries remain, some arcane priority system leaving the cuts and bruises until the structural problems are addressed. I can't get them out of my head, either. Like my chest, they recede against my leg, but are still present. I focus. Accept the pain. Let it wash over me, through me…

The men wheel me around a corner, where Kimura waits in front of an open door. We stop. She looks me up and down, frowning, before punching me in the stomach.

"Shame you needed it so bad, X. I liked you better before."

"My offer stands." I choke out the words before she can hit me again. "I won't oppose you."

"Where's the fun in that?" Kimura takes a knife and stabs me in my left breast, then goes to work on it. I hyperventilate, which ends up hurting more. "I just sat through a meeting where some eggheads lectured me about your healing rates. It was about _this_ annoying." Then she pulls the knife out and wipes the blood on my skin before sheathing it. "Anyway, upshot was I can't hurt you while you're recovering. So, bye!" A smile and a wave, and she's around the corner. She didn't puncture my lung. I can still breathe. I widen my eyes and try to remain lucid. This. _Overcoming_ the pain. It requires force, but it plays to my strengths. Strong will. Dedication.

My guards wheel me into the open door. The room behind it is about three meters by four, empty, all surfaces metal. I stop after my frame bumps the back wall, then they leave and shut the door behind me. The room has no lights and the door is opaque. It also makes a resounding clang when shut, which I have to assume somebody paid extra for.

Just before the door closes all the way, there's a slight blink in my sight, like a glitch or poor edit made something appear. Something brushes against my left ankle, and then I smell her. Kiden Nixon, in my cell. Locked in with me in total darkness.

"Hey." Cloth rustles. She's looking for something.

"Why are you here?"

"Yeah, ya welcome." A flashlight flickers on, and Kiden is in front of me, rooting through a backpack. She's dressed much less formally than our last meeting, with a printed T-shirt and a bomber hat. "Not dying, right? Wanna go?"

"No." There's nothing for me out there.

"Tough shit. We leaving." Kiden roots through her pack and pulls out some packaged food. "Snack?"

"Please." I am hungry. Ravenous. But that is the last thing she can do for me.

Kiden rest her flashlight on its end on the ground near me, and after a moment finds a bottle, which she shakes and opens. "Open wide." She pours the liquid down my mouth. It tastes of chocolate and powdered nutritional additives. "Good for the hard stuff?"

"Thank you, yes. Then you should leave."

"Hate to disappoint, but I ain't going without you." She holds a dense nutrition bar in front of my face and I take bites. Suspended in the air as I am, she's holding it just over the level of her head. "And we're not moving 'till that door opens."

Kiden has no way to get through the door. She plans to wait until, what, morning? Or whenever Kimura decides is best to torment me again? I swallow my current mouthful. "You should not have come."

"Such a negative nancy." My eyes are good enough to see Kiden roll hers.

I finish the bar, my teeth scraping her fingers. "You could die."

"You don't own me, Laura. I'm here cause I wannabe. Maybe stop making demands and start taking the help." She wipes her hand on her jeans and unwraps a second nutrition bar.

Paige made a similar demand of me, but the circumstances couldn't be more different. Paige wanted me to not die in general; I'm only asking Kiden not to die because of _me._ Paige thought my risks weren't worth my life. I know Kiden's aren't worth hers.

"I will kill you, Kiden. It's all I can do." All I know _how_ to do.

"I can take you, Laura. 'Sides…" She shrugs. "We family."

Either way, I did what Paige asked. Kiden seems determined to die just to spite me. And all I can do from here is attempt to convince her otherwise. "I suspect my bindings are adamantium. Kimura's used it before."

"Don't worry." Her voice is muffled by the food in her mouth. "We'll figure it out. Outta here by morning. Far as Bobby and Anna know, I haven't been gone two days."

"How long-" Pain shoots up my leg. "Aah. How long _have_ you been gone?"

"What's that? You ok?" Kiden grabs her flashlight off the ground and looks for something else in her backpack.

"Yes." I nod. "Healing some things hurts more than others."

"Sounds rough." She speaks without looking up at me. "Here's an idea. Whatever your issues are, maybe you need to suck 'em the fuck up and get over yourself."

"My _issues?"_

"I read you murder world bio after you left." She swings the flashlight into my eyes. "Said you went to the future and killed a sentinel factory shitting on frisco. You a boni-fide super hero."

"You don't know what happened." The sentinel mission was the one that got me found out and ostracized from the mutant community. Even Logan closed the chapter, around the time he stopped contacting me. "All I did was kill bad people. That's why I'm here. With Kimura, I can kill more and…"

And what?

Kiden stands. The height of my suspended restraints keeps her looking up. "This what you want your life to be?" She shines the flashlight on my breast. "Didn't have that coming in."

"I just want to help," I whisper.

"Nah, you scared. Fearless assassin, scared of the real world." Kiden moves the flashlight under her chin, casting shadows up her face. "Want to hear a ghost story? I got shit on by my dad. Remember him? Keeps fucking up my life. Figured out I couldn't run, being dead making him hard to shake. So I stood up with my family and we doing fine anyway. Cause I'm stronger than you."

Who is this little girl to think she understands me? "Bullshit, Kiden, you've never faced—"

"Whoa, there!" Kiden raises her voice as she turns back to her equipment. "Almost sounded human for a second, where all that stoic shit go?" She pulls out a hacksaw and removes the plastic covering from its blade. "Tell you a secret, Laura. I'm stronger than you, but you can use my strength for a night. Sound good? Limited time offer."

"Fine." I look away, resting my chin on my right shoulder. "You're right about everything. I can't face it. So go."

"Laura, I will tough love you the _fuck_ out of this building if you don't—"

"Go. Away." I speak as loud as I dare. I don't hear anybody in the hallway or neighboring rooms, but there could be microphones.

I cannot block Kiden from my peripheral vision, so I am prepared when she reaches a hand up and wipes tears from my face. "Ninety six days."

"Days of what?"

She holds her left wrist in front of my face and shines the light on her watch. The LED readout shows both time and date. "Looking. Two days for you an everyone. You think I'm leaving after three months just me an my pack o'wonder, got another thing coming."

I hang my head. What can I possibly say to her? "Kimura is relentless. She's obsessed." I blink away the tears. "She finds me gone, they'll look for us. For you. You've left physical evidence all over this room. You'll have to run."

"Yeah, well." she shrugs, positioning the hacksaw on the chain connecting my left leg to the frame. "Pretty used to that one."

" _Yeah. Well_." I sniff, then harden my voice. "These are people that attacked me in Westchester. Kidnapped active X-men. These are not…" I consider what phrasing will make her understand. "These are not people you fuck around with, Kiden."

"That's OK," she answers, beginning a gentle sawing motion across the chain. It's the loudest thing I've ever heard. "X-Men are passé. Think I might join the Avengers next."

That teases a smile from me. "You do that I actually might agree to this."

She doesn't seem to be making any headway on the leg chain. "Ever met me? Hi, Does Not Play Well With Others here, what's your name?" She leans into the saw, and her motions get jerkier as the tension in her limbs rises.

"I still have a lot of healing to do, Kiden. Please don't injure me."

"Well, of course — oof — _you'd_ say that." Her saw is dulling. "Adamantium, you said?"

"It appears so. Please stop sawing."

She looks up at me. "Step up from 'get out.' I'll take it."

I roll my eyes. "Well, I'm not going to get rid of you that easily." Somebody this foolish will need help. I don't know if I can help her, but she's locked in this room because of me. How can I not try?

I can protect her, on the outside. At least a little. And she's not wrong about me, damn her. I'm still _right_. But she's right too. "Now stop sawing. I suspect Kimura will leave me in here for at least four more hours. I will spend three healing."

The grind of her saw stops. "And what happens after?"

In the dim light, I examine the saw blade. Yes, it dulled. "After three hours of healing, then you cut off my hands and feet."

The look that Kiden gives me makes me really, really want to bring up her calling me weak. I guess she brings out my less stoic side.


	15. Chapter 15

We pass the time in silence. My upbringing taught me well how to be alone, and I can only assume Kiden's months or years spent in frozen time have done her the same. My thoughts are not comforting, but they are comfortable. Familiar. I do not have to fight them.

A few times, I try to wipe them away, to meditate. Time and again my mind returns to problems. How will they come for her? For me? How do we stay free? Stay alive?

My skin is neglected as the healing progresses, chiefly in the recesses of my chest and leg. My chest needed healing before Kimura's stunt aggravated things, what with the surgical incisions, and now burns under the surface. I feel. My whole body feels, from tingles to itches to pain.

Pain everywhere, but none of it good pain, not release. It's not accompanied by the satisfaction of a hard fight won, or the release of control. The draining of tension with the blood pressure. The calm after the storm, the marks down the forearm. Marks that can heal now, but of course they never did. I just had to refresh them once in awhile.

I was seven when I started. I knew even then it wasn't good for me. Is this how addicts feel? These thoughts are too comfortable. "How long has it been?"

Kiden's flashlight clicks back on. "Three and a quarter."

"I said to begin after three."

"Yeah, well, your favorite psycho didn't bust in and kill us yet, so, guess I was right."

My leg may not yet support my weight. "Very well. Let's wait."

We lapse back into silence. Kiden clicks off her flashlight.

"So," she asks after approximately ten more minutes. "Do you fish?"

"What?" Fish?

"Never mind. Gonna stick with me?"

"That would be unwise. I will have to do something high profile to divert attention. Perhaps get arrested."

She sighs in the dark. "Mind control, this shit happens every day. Ya know, J Jones beat the shit out of the avengers once."

"My healing may be temporary," I interrupt. "Kimura threatened. That is another reason I would like to do this quickly. But I know that my healing is more efficient if I have fewer injuries. I don't…" I should have done more testing. "I don't know the correct ratio. How long to wait."

"Welcome to winging it. We call it life." The light clicks back on. "Does this mean you want to start?"

I shake my head. "A little while longer, please. I need to…" Prepare. "Heal further."

And the darkness returns. "You know, wait is killing me, too. I don't want to… God, Laura. Shit's sick."

"The last time I removed one of my hands, I stuck it back onto my wrist. It fused within forty seconds and was fully healed in ten to twelve minutes." I was much less injured and, depending on how the facility went about curing me, potentially working with different powers altogether. "I am waiting for my body to be similarly healthy."

"Ok. Just, like, gimme heads up. Dismembering, not how I wanted to spend my Saturday."

"Is it Saturday?"

Kiden shines her light at her watch. "Well, for me it is. Kinda forget for reality. Just getting tired, too. Always pulls whack with my sleep."

My skin has begun to tingle. If my healing factor is addressing my surface-level scratches and bruises, it can't be long. "Do you have any more food?"

"You know, I'm going your pace cause you the one getting your arms and legs cut off, but I'm on my last bar." She opens it, the wrapper crinkling in silence. "What else we need? 'Sides the saw."

"Leather, wood thicker than a pencil? Something to bite."

She rustles through her bag. "I got jeans."

"That will do."

She feeds me the nutritional bar, accompanied by sips of water, then knots a leg of the jeans. I speak as she works. "The cuffs cover my radiocarpal joint. You will need to cut just below it, and depending on the angle you can cut, will have to circle the bone. Then, remove my hand from the cuff and hold it to"

"I get it! I get it! Holy fuck, Laura, we don't need to go over it in fucking triplicate."

"You should move the flashlight." It's on the ground below me, resting on its end. "It will get covered in blood."

She glares, but grabs it and sticks it into her mouth, between her teeth. There is a chance she will get blood in there, but it's a risk I am willing to take.

"Very well. I am ready." She sticks the knot into my mouth, with the leg dangling from the right of my mouth and the rest of the pants from my left. It smells of detergent.

I count the time as she works, then I keep counting the time after. She makes many faces, which I recognize chiefly as variations of fear and disgust. I regain feeling in my hand approximately two minutes after she begins holding it to me. I give it another fourteen minutes to recover before I extend my claws. Yes, the cuffs are adamantium, and the chains, and the frame as well.

With a disgruntled and slightly bloody Kiden supporting my back, I handle my left hand by myself, falling into her when my last support from above is lost. Thirty four minutes later, I am free.

"Want something to wear?" asks Kiden, standing above me, shining a light on me as I remove the jeans from my mouth.

"Yes, please."

She tosses an outfit at me. It's missing pants. Evidently I am to wear the the pair soaked in my saliva and blood. At least denim is impervious to human jaws.

Rather than un-knot the jeans while holding my left foot in place with one hand, I opt to clean myself off as best I can with the pant bottom. Once the majority of the blood is removed — The facility already has all the DNA they could possibly need — I slice the bloody pant leg off at the knee and dress myself.

"Any chance you'll stay?"

"I'm sorry, Kiden." I shake my head. "When I leave here, your life will be ruined. Yours, and Bobby's, and Anna's, and Jeff's. Like you said. I am not strong, not enough to protect you."

"And better, too." She beams a cheesy smile, then points to it. "See? Better life. Cause I know my friend Laura, my family, she ain't in a lab getting cut on."

I turn to the door. "Thank you for your kindness." I don't have to complete the thought.

"One of these days," Kiden declares, "You're gonna learn what you're worth and it's gonna totally blow your mind."

"I am a killer, trying to be a hero." I stand. "And, sometimes, the opposite."

"Well, I can't speak for the rest of us but I'm inspired to fucking bits," she jokes.

"Help me destroy that air vent." The walls are adamantium, but if I knock a grate from the ceiling, we may be able to trick Kimura. For a time. My foot can support my weight, and with Kiden lifting, I cut the covering down. The vent itself is too small to fit through, but I pick up the bloody pant leg and smear it around the edges. Then I wring out the blood into a puddle under the vent and hand the damp rag back to Kiden, who makes a face and stows it in her bag.

I bring her over to the wall by the door and we wait in silence. Now we find out: Can we get free? Or was some security guard monitoring our unlit cell all night, laughing at our attempts to thwart them? Kiden doesn't seem concerned.

I'm doing this for you, Kiden. I surrendered myself here when it was just myself in danger. For you I will fight to leave again.

And why her? Why Kiden, out of all of the people whose deaths I would cause? Even on those 86% of missions where I was assigned drug lords, mobsters, rapists, bandits, terrorists… Not everybody that got hurt was equally guilty. Not everybody that died.

I hug Kiden. As she is sitting against a wall, the pose is somewhat awkward.

"Sure," she agrees. "This is happening now." She wraps her arms around me and squeezes.

This attempt to throw myself away and admit defeat was simply an attempt to avoid blame for lack of judgment. Past and future. Because I would rather let somebody else condemn innocents to death at my hands than admit I can't make such choices by myself.

Unless those innocents are Kiden, and Bobby, and people I know personally. Because I am a hypocrite. I owe Emma Frost an apology. Everything she said was true.

But I can't change my past. Only my future.

"Ssh."

"Soon?" her mouth whispers straight into my ear.

"Now." Footsteps in the hall. I sit down beside her as she turns off her light, and we pull in our feet. Even with the door swung wide, it will be nearly impossible to see us from the hall.

The footsteps stop, and a jingling keyring precedes a _clang_ and the door opening. Kiden takes my hand and everything stops again.

We stand and look out the door. Kimura is accompanied by a guard on either side, one still holding the door. All three stare into the doorway.

"No touchy," Kiden reminds me, crouching under Kimura's outstretched arms.

The expressions on their faces are fascinating. All three have been caught in a transitional state, catching sight of my vacated bindings in the room's center. The guards, of course, are beginning to display fear. Kimura has never been a kind mistress.

Kimura's happiness wanes. Her eyes are still half-bright but starting to lose their shine, replaced with empty confusion. Kimura has never understood me.

"We going?"

"Just to be clear." I point at Kimura's face. "Touching her will end this."

"Yes, so don't." Kiden tugs on my hand.

My free hand drifts closer to Kimura's face. "And this power doesn't give you any ability to harm somebody with an arbitrarily dense body."

She shakes her head. "Laura, if you can't kill her, I can't."

"Very well." I crouch with her and we escape the trio surrounding the doorway. Kiden leads me down a hall, the opposite direction from where I was originally transported.

I was ready for this. I'd signed my life away. Committed. Given up everything. "Kiden…"

"I know." She turns and smiles. "I'm just that great."

I look at my feet. "You are."

ᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ʙᴏᴏᴋ ᴛᴡᴏ: ᴋɪᴅᴇɴ


	16. Chapter 16

"First name basis with Reed Richards, might make a person think you got your life in order." Kiden casts her gaze up the building's side. Richards doesn't own all of it, but it's still one of the larger slices of Manhattan.

"I am also on first name basis with Satan, Kiden. Would you like to meet either?"

"Pass, thanks." She shakes her head. "But you're fine alone?"

"Infiltration will be easy." An assassination mission, minus the assassination.

"No, I mean, you're gonna be fine?"

"That is a rather loaded question." I withdraw my hand from hers. Time starts again, and I am alone on the sidewalk. Kiden has had subjective hours to move to safety.

For all the gadgetry the Richards are known for, the building's exterior appears flat and unornamented, at least by starlight. It's possible my claws will set off alarms somewhere, but I don't expect it to be a primary issue. I can climb quickly. Kiden gave me dark clothing after my shower.

It was correct, I know, to lie to her.

There are many reasons why I don't lie. Lies are unbecoming of heroes. In most contexts, I'm not even good at them. Lies hearken to my days as an assassin. For some combination of these reasons, I don't like how I feel when I lie. And isn't how we feel the reason anybody does anything?

This is not to say I always tell the truth. I wield silence as a blunt instrument, and there are many topics about which I am incredibly under-informed. Nobody in my life has ever asked me about the finer points of Elizabethan fashion or semiconductor manufacturing, but plenty I've met have wished for me to talk about myself.

At first I answered these questions with, "I don't know." I saw others grow tired and restless if I didn't attempt to engage. So I told them things. I have always tried my best to be accurate, but plenty of these things have turned out to be false. Once, I told somebody that I felt nothing when I killed. Within six hours I told somebody else I had to kill to feel alive. I thought both were true when I said them. Now, I believe neither.

But I could still be wrong. Despite being better informed than every other person that exists, I would hardly consider myself a subject matter expert.

I've reached my destination. A claw pops a window open and I climb into the Future Foundation's private medical ward. Cots on one wall, and piles of indecipherable medical equipment everywhere else.

As I close the window, I hear footsteps in the hall. I look out over the cityscape and raise my hands above my head. Two seconds later, the door the hall opens, flooding the room with light, and I hear the high-pitched whine of a capacitor.

I remain still.

"Laura Kinney?" asks Reed Richards. "Turn around."

I circle, keeping my arms above my head. In the doorway is Reed Richards. He smells of suspicion. Five to six centimeters of brown hair frosting at the edges. In his forties. Wearing a black and white jumpsuit. Currently stands around 190 centimeters, slightly over his resting height. Elongation likely an unconscious reaction due to stress or perceived threat. His head blocks the hall light, casting me in shadow, but I can still make out multiple days of stubble on his face. In his hand is a firearm of unfamiliar make, aimed at me.

"I'd like to talk before you turn me in."

"Incapacitate the intruder."

Some of the medical equipment lights up and shines a beam on me. Breathing becomes harder, as though my chest is constricted. The light seems to be collecting in a field around my body.

"Please, can we speak?" Movement of my jaw feels constricted as well, as though I'm submerged in water, or perhaps molasses. I test out my arms. They move if I exert pressure, but not very fast.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. says you're dangerous." In the sterile air, it is easy to smell him change to anger. "Not that I needed them to, with footage of you murdering an X-man outside my lobby."

Language is such a complex tool. It has two uses, uses I spent much of my life viewing as being at cross purposes. The first is to inform. To enlighten, to explain. My speech is built for it. I am too _good_ to use it otherwise. Too _pure._

Language's second use is to convince. Speaking to persuade, not to inform, this is why people lie. People bring motives into their words. People want only to get their way. People are false.

But there _is_ an intersection, though it's murky, hard to see. I've had trouble with it for a long time. It is possible to argue without falsehood. To sway with only truth.

"I saved your daughter."

Richards is still for seven seconds. Then he shrinks ten centimeters, exposing my eyes to the harsh hall lighting. "Cancel hold." His scent changes to exhaustion.

I blink and turn away. The security machine powers down, once more indistinguishable from the gadgetry around it.

It's not that I've limited my speech to purely factual statements in the past. I am not an automaton devoid of want, and I've expressed those wants to others. But the idea of bringing up something completely unrelated to the current topic of discussion is counterintuitive at best. I don't know what it is at worst.

"What the hell happened?"

I lower my arms. "Your lobby was seeded with a chemical trigger. It caused me to lose myself and lash out with violence."

He nods, still unsure. "Does use of this trigger _normally_ result in death?"

"It does."

Richards rubs the stubble on his chin. "And why have you come? Twice?"

"I need the opinion of a medical supergenius, sir."

He scoffs. "Well, I am that." Then he turns to go. To wake somebody else, perhaps, or bring equipment.

"Just a minute. Sir."

Richards glances back. I try for eye contact, but the light in the hall makes me look back down.

I do not lie. I haven't lied to him, not really. But it feels like one all the same. "It didn't. Not this time. The trigger had worn off by the time I killed Paige." I sit down on the floor. "You may turn your machine back on until you've secured appropriate restraints."


	17. Chapter 17

Trigger scent leaves me vicious, focused, but I get stupid. Against capes, enemies with brains, I'm worse off. But when all I have to do is slaughter? I never hesitate and I ignore all distractions. If a problem can be solved by throwing sharp metal at it, I will still be more than capable.

It is rare these days that I would _want_ to put myself into such a state. Even Kimura wouldn't find me particularly useful, for all that I'd follow her most important order. One reason why she spent so much effort trying to break my spirit. Besides, I suppose, her own enjoyment.

It is the reason Paige lived so long.

"Is all this necessary?" Susan Storm refers to my bindings. I could loose myself, but it would take long enough that the various security measures pointed at my bed would activate. In theory.

"If it gives you peace of mind, then yes." I could clear this room in 3 seconds. I don't plan to, and nobody present will dose me with trigger scent, so should I bring it up? "It is not a problem for me." I wince as Reed withdraws the needle from my arm. The wound is already closing.

"It doesn't." She smooths my hair back from my forehead. "I trust you, Laura."

There is little point in me asking why. She's given explanations for similar things in the past. But then, she also doesn't ask her husband to undo them.

I turn my head. "When will you know?"

"This should be a pretty easy test. I, uh…" Richards glances at his wife, then back to me. "I have some genetic documentation on hand from when you were in last. If you have the same powers as before, I just need to compare and test for foreign agents manipulating the healing process." He places the vial of blood into some sort of spectrograph and starts pressing buttons. "If your powers are homebrewed then it may take more time to figure out how they work. But rest assured." He taps his head. "I will."

And if it's gone, then what? If this is fleeting, temporary, what does that mean? I will swallow my pride and appeal to Hank McCoy if I must. I do not like feeling how I felt. "Thank you. I'll try not to take up much of your time."

Susan continues to stroke my head. "Where are you going next?"

I close my eyes. "If I am confident a barrage of bullets will not kill me, I will turn myself into the police."

"Laura. You don't have to do that." Susan's voice hardens, just a bit. Reed's smell mixes with sweat and apprehension.

I let Kiden rescue me so that I could take responsibility for my mistakes. And for her, as well. I asked Kiden to go underground, but she is willful enough to ignore me. I must keep my location visible. And, ideally, not entirely out of reach. Stay within Kimura's grasp, should she have the wherewithal to move against me.

"Paige Guthrie deserves justice."

"And I'm sure that turning yourself into the notoriously fair and tolerant NYPD will guarantee she gets it." I'm not familiar with this side of Susan Storm. Her hand stays cool and gentle on my brow, contrasting her fiery tone. "I know what you did for us, Laura. You will always have a home here."

Susan Storm has built up an image of me that I will never be able to embody. "Thank you for the offer, but I must attract-"

"Ah-Ha!" Reed's voice moves closer, but I hear no footsteps. "Since the manifestation of your mutant powers, they've worked passively to heal you. Syphon's biology somehow coopted your healing properties into healing _his_ body instead. But without the internal safeguards, your powers burnt out entirely!"

I open my eyes. Reed's head has joined us by my bed, while his body remains across the room with his equipment.

"You were healed by, essentially, giving your powers time to recover, then reactivating your latent X-genes from scratch." And my senses? Perhaps the genes controlling those were unaffected. "Did it feel anything like the first time they turned on?"

Dr. Rice gave me an almost-lethal dose of radiation poisoning. "It did." I recall learning about radiation dosing two years later. I was surprised he didn't give me the surely-lethal dose, to ensure my options were to mutate or die.

"Well then! You're sorted out." I do not like that Richards had a sample to compare, which must have been taken from me during my last stay, without my consent. But the ship has long sailed on me keeping control of my DNA. "No kill switches or timers, nanobot or otherwise. You should find everything in working order." He nods once, then withdraws his head back to his body.

"I think Laura should stay with us for a few days," Susan tells him.

Richards walks over to us. With her free right hand, Susan clasps mine, bunching up my fingers.

The two stare into each other's eyes. Some form of communication passes between them in a flurry of expressions and glances. I will never be party to such subtlety.

"I won't stay." The room is silent, but both look at me like I've interrupted them. I have.

"We'll speak to the authorities," announces Richards. "Try to clear things up for you."

Susan remains concerned. "Young lady, I'm not letting you out of that bed until you give me a plan. A _good_ one." Her face. Her eyes…

"You love me." My eyes widen, more at the audacity to say it aloud than the revelation my words contain.

Susan, for her part, smiles and leans down to hug me. "I told you people needed you, Laura. I'm proud to count myself among them."

I slice through the bindings on my left wrist and hug her back. My nose is acute enough to smell each individual's cocktail of scents from meters away, but from here I can only be overwhelmed by her lavender shampoo. She loves me. She treasures me.

Do I deserve to love Paige Guthrie?

"I will seek out the Sapien League."

Susan lifts her head to stare at mine. She smells of lavender, and kindness, and suspicion. "And what happens once you find them?"

"I need not kill to bring to justice." Faster, certainly. But that isn't the point.

"That's a dark path." Richards.

"They were likely responsible for the trigger scent in your lobby." They knew of our presence from our appearance at the deli. Then, they learned our location somehow, perhaps with local connections. The employee at the motel? Finally, they learned our ultimate destination, probably due to a Sapien League sympathizer in S.H.I.E.L.D. I've killed such men before, when I killed.

"That doesn't mean it's where you should be in your life right now right now." Susan moves back into her chair.

I've read science policy papers that stated that the greatest uncharted frontiers lay in space, yet to be found. Still others look to magic, to other dimensions, inside atoms.

I know so little of myself. In the face of such cosmic puzzles, I can't see my psyche as a deep, meaningful mystery. It will never inspire poetry, nor will its study be published in a journal or receive a government grant. I am no great question. By any outside standard I am barely worth considering. Any standard save the amount of time I have spent seeking even the smallest scraps of insight.

And yet, despite my complete lack of objective reference, I am still the best there is. "No. This is exactly where I should be in my life right now."

The pair share another glance, then turn back to me. "I said a _good_ plan." Susan points an accusing finger at my chest. "Let me get some intel and we'll begin."


	18. Chapter 18

I've made mistakes in my life. Plenty, from before I could reasonably be held accountable to this week. Let friends down. Hurt. Killed. Nothing I haven't been over in my head, time and time again.

But if I can't enjoy myself at times like this, what's left?

The sentry leans out of the window and takes a drag on his cigarette, completely missing the flakes of brick and mortar falling on top of his head. At least 180 centimeters, three centimeters of dirty blonde hair, large frame. I reposition my hands. This maneuver would be easier were all of my blood not rushing to my head.

I retract five claws and partially retract my sixth, pivoting around the claw embedded in the brickwork just above the window. The maneuver swings me around towards the man's head, which I grab with my right arm. Before he can react, I push off with my feet to yank him from the window and slip my arm around his neck.

An assassination, minus the assassination.

I'm constricting his windpipe, keeping him from shouting. Unfortunately, we're dangling in front of the window, so anybody looking into his room will see us.

"If you move, I'll drop you." Only three stories up, but hopefully still threatening.

He calls my bluff, obviously. Besides the cigarette he has nothing, the gun for his hip holster likely somewhere just inside the window. I loop my legs around his bulk. His limbs are harmless, in disarray. He can't reach me behind him, and his movements only stress my arm on his neck. The weight damages my arm, but I'll heal.

He stops flailing his limbs and grabs onto the window frame, pulling us back inside. I feel my anchor shifting the mortar above us, showering us both in dust. I retract the claw before the brickwork breaks, or my arm. My skeleton is not adamantium. I only have claws.

He lands hard on the floor and I land on his back, arm still around his neck. With my free arm, I tighten my stranglehold.

It's impressive how much trouble one must go through to keep others alive. The naive assumption would be that killing requires more effort than not doing so. People cling to life: Death is among the worst possible perceived outcomes. But not so. Almost all applications of force fall into the too-far category. Threading the needle of undamaged, but incapacitated, is an exhausting exercise.

I should have spent more time at Avengers Academy. They never taught me how to fight; I could already incapacitate most of our combat instructors in battle. They were there to teach me to thread the needle. I am under no illusions I was recruited for any reason other than to be defused.

He stops thrashing. I loosen my grip over fifteen seconds as his pulse slows to its resting state. His body will hurt for days, his throat for weeks. Unless he snapped a finger or other small bone, it will be fine after.

I don't know _why_ that's so important. This is a sapien league clubhouse. Why would a broken finger be so bad? Well, if anybody else is between me and my goal, I make no guarantees.

My information is sparse. I have the building's municipal blueprint and a few exterior photos. The rest is assumptions: I assume the most sensitive areas will be on the top floor. I assume that sensitive areas will contain computers or administrators with the information I need. I will uncover those I seek, or their whereabouts.

In other words: Hurt bad people. One step short of my true expertise, but close enough for most purposes. I get to work.

I hear a man walking through the hallway. I intercept him outside the lookout's room with an adamantium-weighted fist to the face. He drops. The building has only so many rooms. I drag the hallway man through the doorway to buy myself up to thirty seconds against further investigation.

Nothing for it but to start through the building and see what I find. Next door is a bedroom, then a bathroom, then a closet. Then some sort of office. I smell an occupant. The door is unlocked.

I open it and take in the room. Approximately three by four meters, with a picture window on its back wall. A desk and chair in one corner, the desk supporting piles of stationary supplies and a silver laptop with a blank screen. A minimalist bookshelf against the wall to my left. A cushioned chair and ottoman below the two-in-one floor lamp bathing the room in a soft, yellowy light. Sitting down is a man, reading. Late forties. Balding. Likely knows what I need to know.

He looks up when I enter. I raise my left fist to my chin and shush him, extending a single claw up past my nose.

He blanches and dives for his bookshelf, where a clearly unloaded pistol lies on a lower shelf. I take two steps forward and lay my claw against his throat mid-lunge. If he reaches for the pistol, it will exert pressure.

This man likely knows little of guns. But if a round is chambered, I don't want the shot alerting the rest of the building. "Are you ready to do what I tell you?"

He shrinks back into his seat and studies me.

"Are you ready." I extend a claw from my right hand to mirror my left. "To do." I step forward and stab into both armrests, millimeters from his arms. "Whatever I tell you."

He stinks of fear and urine.

"Say it."

His eyes flicker between my face and my hands. His breathing becomes labored. I almost feel sorry for the man.

Then Paige Guthrie whispers into my ear. I lean down until our foreheads touch. " _Say it._ "

"I'll… I'll do it. You can have… He hasn't been here long. We haven't done anything yet…"

I narrow my eyes. "Where?"

"The basement."

I concuss him over two hits when one isn't sufficient, then tuck the laptop under my arm. The living _must_ come before the dead.

If my only goal was justice for those passed I would have to kill myself.

I take the stairs three at a time, the quickest I can go while maintaining some semblance of stealth. The situation doesn't sound urgent but I'd prefer to be overzealous than late. The stairwell takes me down past ground level before stopping.

The building was residential before the League moved in, and my sparse intel suggests lower floors are still set up as apartments. The basement hallway has eight doors, four on a side. The simplest to check turns out to be a laundry room, unoccupied. Next is an unmarked but unlocked door, a disused office. There are a lot of fans and pipes in the area, and a few washers and dryers running, so I close my eyes and listen. This door… Most likely a closet. This one… Pipes of rushing air. The next, yes, I hear breathing and smell life. Three scents, plus weaponry, spoor, smoke, and food. Two smell of sweat, the third of fear. Placing the laptop on the ground, I slice through the latch and deadbolt and ease the door open.

Two figures in fatigues and body armor lounge at a rusty table near the door of a large square room. Overhead lights cluster in the center, with the corners of the room fading almost to darkness. A folding chair is placed under the lights, facing away, its occupant secured with restraints. The chair has chains running up to the ceiling, connecting to various pipes and casting lines of shadow across the floor.

The figure's right arm appears to be smoke. An opaque trail wafts up from the socket, although it disperses a bit too easily on contact with the ceiling.

I get halfway to the table before either guard reacts.

The further one, facing me, widens her eyes and reaches down for an M16-variant rifle propped against the table's leg. The other turns his head. I'm not exactly silent.

The woman lifts her rifle towards the door but I'm already in the air. I shove off the the man's head with my right hand and extend two claws from my left, slicing her rifle diagonally into thirds. My legs are spread from the jump, so I bring them back together in front of me and ram my knees into her chest.

We go back with her chair and I roll into a handstand, springing up. The man is holding his head with his left hand, opening a buttoned pistol holster with his right. I plant my left foot and kick into the table, which scrapes begrudgingly across the concrete floor and into his chest, knocking him down.

The woman below me is catching her breath. She reaches for her own pistol, tucked into her waistband. I stomp on her wrist. It seems to work. I do it again. "Stay," I bark.

The man opts not to rise, remaining largely obscured by the table. I flip the near end and the table comes down edgewise on his stomach, doing much more damage than I intended. But he's winded and drops his pistol to lift it off.

There's a stinging in my leg as the woman below me sticks a knife through it. Fine then. She can get the concussion she always wanted. I palm her forehead, driving her head into the floor, and she goes limp.

The man, meanwhile, has leveraged the table onto a corner and sent it clattering, revealing his top half, clutching a SCAR rifle in two steady hands. He sends a burst into my stomach, probably through more luck than good aim. Damn. I wanted to do this _quietly_. I spent too much time bending down, I should've…

I step forward and slam my boot into his crotch. His limbs are stiff - a stress response - and his eyes bug out. He stops firing to re-aim, but I'm faster, slicing through his rifle and trigger finger. Metal clatters to the ground. He yelps. I stomp his stomach where the table landed. I could have killed him. I jumped right over him, placed a hand on his head, kept my claws tucked nice and safe inside while he pulls out a rifle and shoots to kill, no regard for…

I grab his collar, lift his head off the ground, and slap his cheek. "Stay." He freezes.

I cut cloth from his shirt and wrap the bleeding stump of his right index finger. The loudest sound is the whimpering of the figure tied in the chair. In short order the finger is bound, so I slice the other weapon holsters and sheathes off the woman's body and throw them into a corner. I retrieve the laptop from the door and bring it inside.

The figure tied to the chair turns out to be a boy in his early teens. 160 centimeters tall, 55 kilograms, close-cropped black hair, dark skin. In addition to his arm, smoke leaks from his right eye socket. Acne across his face. He is in a dark purple hoodie and jeans, and bites his lip to stop crying.

"My name is Laura. I'm going to get you out of here."

"I…" He sniffles.

I start on the chains. Links clatter to the ground as I work. "Are you hurt?"

"You, you're like…"

The bindings were tight around his limbs. His blood was restricted. "Don't try to stand." I free his wrists and ankles without drawing blood, then start massaging his legs. "You won't be able."

He rubs his wrists while I work. "Are you an X-Man?"

"I'm an Avenger." I graduated as an Avengers Third Grade. My X-status is maddeningly less concrete.

"You're bleeding." He points to the bullet holes in my midsection.

"I'm fine." I'm no longer bleeding. My body sealed up a good minute ago.

I am X-Man too, I suppose. You don't really just _stop_ being one. But that doesn't mean I'm in a spot to restart. "Do you want to join the X-men?"

"I… I don't know. Do I have to kill people?"

"I didn't kill anyone getting you." Boots in the stairwell. I walk over to the door, swing it shut, and drag the table over to prop against it. The chairs, too. The guard glares while I work, cradling his bandaged hand. The boy watches, too. "What's your name?"

"Uh, is Smoke taken?"

Smoke? The name was used by a criminal Logan killed some years back. "No." There is no reason to clarify my earlier statement. Smoke will do. I check my phone. No signal.

Steps in the hallway outside. Somebody investigating the shots. We're no longer escaping unseen. I move to help Smoke stand, but he's doing it already, if unsteadily. Escaping earlier would have been ideal, but I can't run silently up a fight of stairs carrying somebody who weighs more than I do.

"Smoke, get into that corner." I point to the corner covered by the arc of the door. "Remain there until I give the all-clear. Try not to make too much noise. Just trust me."

He stumbles over. "Is that them?"

"It is." He can hear them now. More than one. A radio buzzes, one cut from a guard's belt, laying on the floor. I skewer it. Somebody pushes on the door. The table wasn't very heavy. I don't have long.

I walk over to the guard and lean down to his face. "I want you to understand something."

He is silent.

"Whatever happens to that boy, will happen to you. Do you understand?"

He swallows, then begins to cry. Somebody bangs on the door, which opens a few degrees. This is what I get for cutting through the deadbolt. Bang, open a few more.

I point to Smoke. "Speak to him." I take off for the door, and jump, the next bang opening it enough for me to slip through. My feet impact the chest of the man swinging the pipe, who crumples. Six in the hall. One to my right, one beneath my feet, four strung down the hall to my left. All armed, all my size or larger. The nearest two are already holding rifles. They raise them. I name them Bob and Charlie.

One hand per rifle. My right hand finds its mark, slicing through Bob's weapon before it's brought to bear. My left sticks a claw straight down the barrel as Charlie fires. Two rounds eject, shattering on adamantium, with their shards turning my hand half to ground beef.

But after two shots, the weapon is destroyed as well. Charlie reaches for a sidearm. Bob, to my right, comes in to grapple. Good. I don't need two hands for this. I run the numbers: _Four seconds to clear. Nine seconds to clear nonlethally._

I vault over Charlie, hooking his nostrils with two fingers, kicking the one behind him in the neck. He -Daniel- falls into Eliza and Frank behind him. Eliza shrugs him off and Frank joins him on the ground. I twist around and land on my feet.

Behind me, Bob charges past his downed comrades. I slip my foot under a dropped assault rifle and flip it up into my hand. Holding it by the barrel, I hit Bob across the face. He falls sans two teeth.

I flip the gun back into firing position, click off the safety, and place my foot on a rising Daniel's back for stability. Eliza takes a look at the gun aimed at her chest and freezes, dropping a knapsack. Frank takes a cue from her and stops mid-rise.

Alex, my first down, does not. I hear him stirring behind me so I look back and plant a kick on the top of his head, knocking him back to the ground, then extend my foot claw in front of his face for emphasis. "Down."

All six do as I say. Then a slam echoes through the hallway as the stairwell door shuts.

I make it two steps before the lights go out.


	19. Chapter 19

I have good eyesight. Consequently, I do not carry a flashlight. It is a particularly low priority the day after escaping captivity with no possessions. I have a prepaid cell phone, but the screen doesn't light up.

Two guards in the hallway had big bulky Mag-lights on their belts: Daniel and Alex, the man I jumped on for my dramatic entrance. I locate Daniel by his smell, less than a meter from where I last pushed him down. He yelps when I grope for his belt.

Light in hand, I make my way to the door. The stairwell is sealed off by a fire door. Solid metal, no window. I stab through it with my partially recovered left hand, but my claw fails to penetrate to air. A barrier was placed on the other side.

Is this the fallback, or were the guards rushing me the distraction? It doesn't matter. What matters now is getting out. I have a number of possible avenues.

First, I could cut through the door and then whatever's behind it. That will take time. I begin to slice. At this rate, cutting the door off its hinges and prying it out will take two to four minutes, and the object behind it -likely a metal slab or block- will take longer. Second, I could cut through the wall next to the door, but the stairwell isn't particularly wide. There's barely any room before I'm burrowing through bedrock. Third is the ceiling, which could present a problem if escaping with Smoke. Then there's communication, possibly threatening to break the building. My cell phone still reports no signal. There's waiting. Smoke and the eight human league members will eventually provoke a response.

I head over to the guards and, one by one, destroy their radios. I'm down to the the last, Alex rubbing his head and flinching as I slice it off his belt, when it crackles to life. "X-23?" The older man from the room upstairs.

I turn off the light and take a few steps away before answering. The area's layout is simple enough. "I'm sorry. You must have me confused with somebody else."

"I don't think that's possible." The signal is strong enough to make out sounds in his environment. I hear the screech of metal against metal behind his words. I don't hear it on person, so it can't be coming from the stairwell. It still concerns me. Preparing some sort of weapon?

"I have a name." As I speak, a quiet hum stops. Background noise I barely noted. Air circulation. " _And_ eight hostages."

"All eight?" A whispered conversation is taking place in the old man's room. "Your claws didn't slip?"

Assisted by a stable stride, I enter the room with the air pipes, close the door, and turn my flashlight back on. "Don't mistake precision for restriction."

"Don't worry. I've read your file."

"My file must have gaps." The room monitors air circulation in the building. Of course, all I can do without electricity is turn valves and levers. And that, in turn, does nothing without an airflow to stop or redirect.

"On my command I can flood the entire level with gas. Then I take you into custody and sell you to the purifiers."

 _Large_ gaps.

But I can play along. My flashlight finds air vents in the ceiling, about twenty centimeters wide. I check my phone again. "Is this a trap designed for me?"

"So many questions," he admonishes me.

"Don't waste time. This is two-way." He initiated contact. He must want _something,_ if only to distract me.

He sighs. The man keys his radio, and then sighs into it. Clearly it's for my benefit. Then, to make it extra confounding, he switches back to words to convey his meaning: "It's a trap for anybody. You're the first person unlucky enough to walk into it."

No reason to stall any longer. If his only reason to communicate is to distract me, I should find out sooner rather than later. "What do you want?"

"I want you to surrender. You'll find it's the best outcome. I'm willing to go over the alternatives with you, if you like."

"Fine." I scoff. Without keying my radio. "I assume you have something planned for if I sit here with hostages."

"Yes," he admits. "I have gas that will knock everybody in your zone out."

I've heard enough. Clipping the radio to my belt, I claw my way up the wall and stick one claw into the ceiling. I can be on the first floor in ten to twenty seconds.

"Careful there, X-23. I have a second gas, too."

I freeze, my right claws centimeters into the ceiling. He can't seriously be proposing…

"I know you can get out of there before gas knocks you out. But that's only true if you're holding your breath, rather than slaughtering everybody you can smell."

My blood runs cold. I jump down. "Your men would die." A statement of fact, designed to convince.

"Yes. I'd prefer they don't. But more than that, I'm interested in making sure _I_ don't."

"And what is your plan to keep them alive?"

"You let my people bind you and radio the all-clear. I assume you left them enough limbs to accomplish that."

First, the facts: He probably has access to my chemical trigger. I got here by linking them to the group that planted it in the Baxter building, after all. If it's a bluff, it's a strong one. And it's not hard to procure more conventionally medical gases, particularly if safety is not a primary concern. Fentanyl would suffice.

I don't know how long the trigger scent would take to affect me. It's been modified a few times in recent years, and the aerosolized strain I encountered in recent months always took me by surprise. It's possible I can forestall it by holding my breath, if I know it's coming.

After it hits, I retain enough intelligence in that state to open doors and break through any other primitive barrier I could whip up. Smoke and the sapien guards _will_ die.

"I want proof."

"Well, that's going to be a problem, given our line of communication."

Releasing any trigger scent would be enough, a fact that I know from the baxter building. I would clean up all nine souls in under twenty seconds. And he could give a test burst of his other gas to prove he has that as well, but then if he doesn't stop releasing it I will be ten or twenty seconds behind in escaping with my breath held. My body will heal through some toxins, but will fall asleep eventually. Possibly after the toxicity has killed everybody else exposed to the same concentration.

I want to bargain. I know that, if I bargain, I'm admitting defeat. I'll get caught in the minutiae of the what and the how much and not consider escape as a viable alternative. But I must. I have to. I at least have to _consider_ it.

If I fail, I'll kill. Eight guards. And even if I can rationalize them, a boy too. Nearly my age.

Once, when Sooraya was sick with a stomach bug, she and Noriko —well, mostly Noriko— attempted to describe nausea. After Sooraya made it clear that she wasn't experiencing the overactive gag reflex symptom, I was able to sympathize, telling her that I, too, had felt "stomach dizzy" in the past.

Noriko decided I was lying. When pressed for details, I couldn't admit that I'd been disemboweled in a twilight raid of a Purifier camp in Oklahoma nine days earlier. Her indignation served as a good portent for our eventual fallout.

And even if I had felt it, she insisted, it wasn't truly nausea. Nausea's primary horror is persistence. Any feelings arising from my physical trauma can't be more than fleeting.

Well, Noriko, it's not going away now.

"What happens to Smoke?"

"Don't worry. He'll be going with you."

"What if it's a condition of my surrender?"

"I can't let the boy go." He speaks as if to a child. "He knows our location."

I key my mic and sigh into it. Hopefully he'll interpret it in a way that benefits me. "You're already pulling out of this base. You don't know how I learned of its location." After a day with no word, Sue asked if she could contact S.H.I.E.L.D. I told her no. Better to try the X-Men.

I know that if he releases the gas, he will be their killer. This is a safe, obvious fact that I can turn over and analyze and find free of defect. Pulling the trigger on a weapon he knows is loaded.

But I don't want to retreat into my cell again and listen to fairy tales while innocents die around me. I got more than my week's fill of that in the Baxter building's lobby. More than my lifetime's.

"Fine. You're the big fish, and I'd prefer my men not die. Take less than five minutes." Understandable. He can't risk me burrowing through a wall to somewhere less obvious.

I walk into the hall, around the six guards huddled together, and into Smoke's room. I catch the female guard groping around in the dark for pieces of her ruined gun. Smoke and the male guard are still where I left them, holding onto each other for dear life. The guard's face is streaked with tears, and Smoke's forehead is scored with black streaks moving up, even from his left eye.

They look at me when my light illuminates the room. I stand in front of them and make eye contact with the guard before keying my radio again. "Smoke goes free. That's the deal."

"The clock is ticking, X," he replies.

"I'll smell if you're lying." It's a calculated lie. I can smell classical indicators of lies, like nervousness or fear, but interpreting the subtle parts requires somebody better with people.

"Then I won't lie."

"My proof. Give me three seconds of the first gas." There's always a risk that he'll keep running it. I could climb up the wall, get ready to break out if it doesn't stop. I don't see much point.

A hissing sound is all the warning we get. Suddenly Smoke and the guards are coughing and covering their eyes. I feel something, too, a fuzziness. Then the sound stops and all three people in the room slowly calm their lungs. They each turn to me, piecing together what just happened.

I leave. In the hall, I slice through Eliza's bag, revealing a complex network of restraints. They don't appear to be adamantium —a test proves it— but rather, meant to bind me in such away that my claws can't touch anything. Incredibly difficult to use on somebody unwilling, since one second with one claw would ruin the restraints permanently. Their plan was doomed to failure.

I guess at the correct pose, then hand Eliza the radio and the restraints and nod. I close my eyes and think of Paige, letting the coughing guards recede. Is this what she would want me to do? Want me to be?

I'm being a _hero._ I'm saving nine lives. That's what I signed up for. What she wanted me to do, sort of. I'd find my own way, in time. The purifiers will almost assuredly keep me alive. And if they don't, well, there are worse things.

I'm hogtied. Eliza speaks into the radio, tells them I'm ready. My breath is slow, steady. Nirvana is a pipe dream. But I've reached _something_. Something that eluded me for a very long time. Whatever happens next, will happen. I will let it. This will wash over me, and then I will be Laura again.

"I'm coming in," answers the man. "Plug her nose."

ᴇɴᴅ ᴏғ ʙᴏᴏᴋ ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ: ʟᴀᴜʀᴀ

 _Continued in All-New X-Men, Issue 18_


	20. Epilogue

Weapon X.

I wasn't raised here. Not in a place like this. It was a lab, yes, but more… banal. The wide hallways, the all-metal architecture, this place must have been designed to feel foreboding. Sinister. Evil.

This was Logan's nightmare, not mine. Being captured, controlled by powerful forces. A nightmare of strength failing. Being outfought.

My nightmare was fading into the bureaucracy and being forgotten there.

I am not superstitious by nature, but if this place has ghosts, it'll be me that they haunt. Certainly not those gangly teenaged wannabes, rescued from innocence by their own undead shadows. The rest of the X-Men… I wasn't raised here, but I'm connected.

Yes, here. I've reached the end of the administrative offices, and entered the experimental wing. The X-Men have renovated, but a splash of paint can't cover truths etched in steel. First beyond the bulkhead are the changing rooms, segregated by gender to preserve modesty; each contains a shower room and a bank of lockers. The lockers are neither keyed nor coded. This was a place of trust.

Past the lockers is a medical bay, this one benevolent in its intention as a haven for the employees themselves. Unstocked, but it's clear. The lighting is softer when I flick it on. The bare metal slabs, remnants of the beds, are indented to account for some long-absent cushioning. In the back, a small alcove for the attending. It even has room for personal effects.

I penetrate deeper and reach the real meat.

Observation rooms. These, of course, are instantly recognizable. The stairs up are the first clue to the immensity of the chamber beyond. I've spent hundreds of hours in arenas like that, usually fighting, other times being splayed and demonstrated for some higher-up or another. Many died here, in quick, desperate struggles. Tested beyond their limits, their lives stolen in pursuit of some fleeting genetic dominance. Looking down on the chamber, through the layer of six-centimeter safety glass, I begin to understand how people physically above such struggle would see themselves as beyond it.

One panel is shattered, letting me jump down six meters to the arena floor. Thankfully, the renovation team cleared the shards of glass off somewhere. From here I can see that the glass is two-way. Maybe it can be electrochromatically darkened, but I never saw them try at my facility. There was never a point in disguising the onlookers. When you live in the facility, you are observed.

Why _is_ the observation room so high up? I never saw the vertical space used. The doors to the arena are standard size. I can only conclude that it was psychologically necessary to give the observers the extreme angle. Perhaps they liked the aesthetic.

I exit the back arena door, and now I'm in more familiar territory. Cells line the walls, punctuated by the barest of amenities at junctions. By the door are larger cells, with thicker doors. For occupants where fatalities are measured by meters transported. I walk further in. Around a few bends I reach smaller rooms. Some of these have padding. Thinner doors. Larger cell windows.

This is where I would have been placed. I was dangerous, obviously: danger was my purpose. But the naive thought of me as just a little girl, and the more experienced knew that I never stepped out of line. I was raised far too carefully to rebel.

Katherine Pryde asked me to choose a residence. One of these will do nicely.

I open a random door and peek in. I will ask for a mattress next time Ms. Pryde…

I hear it before I smell her. First, the click-clack of impractically high heels on steel bulkhead. Then, the subtle perfuming, shampooing, and natural scents mixing together into an aroma crafted by a master. To even imply that her scent is imperfect is to suggest erroneously that anything, even her own perspiration, could act against her.

Emma Frost rounds the hall corner and approaches me head-on. Of course the day would come when I have to see her again. Perhaps my primary reason for avoiding the X-Men was avoiding this exact confrontation. And then they had to go save my life. How inconsiderate!

There is, of course, one thing that defies the X-Man's mistress: Myself. I have a very good memory, and right now it's stuck replaying our last interaction. "If I see you again, I will kill you. Or you will kill me."

Emma expressed frustration in the past about my tight mental control. Seeing her, I close my eyes. Focus on my senses, ignoring their meanings. I hear sounds, I smell smells, I feel the sway of my body. I open myself to the world.

Let Frost read my mind. I give her everything. My knowledge, my doubt, my shame. I did everything wrong. She won. She has the right.

Some minutes later, I open my eyes. I'm alone in the hall. I don't know what she read, how deeply she probed. But it's clear that, whatever she saw, she's ready to tolerate my presence for the first time.

A smile creeps across my face.

Of _course_ she'd let me go. She's a grown-up. I'm still figuring this stuff out.


	21. Notes

I went into this fic with the following goals: I wanted to explain how Laura got her healing factor, and I wanted to write Kimura. Early on I decided a partnership was in order, and since Paige hadn't appeared in anything since Wolverine and the X-Men's first run some years back, I used her. When I was planning the story, the image of Laura surrendering to the facility stuck me, and made it in mostly intact as the flashforward introduction.

I tried to really make this story a turning point for Laura, which meant a lot of references, large and small, to her previous appearances. From high-profile like her solo runs and Target X, to X-Force and New X-Men, to smaller stuff like Manifest Destiny and Uncanny. I even did my best to justify some of the most out-of-character stuff she did in books like Wolverines and Uncanny, with middling success. In-character was the name of the game, past and future: I wanted this to lead into her All-New X-Men, so I tried to slowly ease her out of things like her stilted, un-bendisian speaking voice and her darker impulses.

Since I wrote this for fun, I focused on the parts of writing I find fun, and planning isn't one. If the plot feels like it meanders, that's true for me as well. I wrote thousands of words of monologues and tried to distill them into Laura's thought processes and views as I went. The three "acts" correspond to a standard story structure, but there's a lot of contrivance to get from A to B. My hope is that readers won't be put off by the threadbare plotting because the plot was never the point. The star is Laura. All that matters is where her head is, and the plot is a mechanism for changing that. In a way, the plotting's improvisational tone resembles a lot of comic books I've read, but I don't mean that as a compliment.

 **Chronology**

You can construct a chronology that contradicts fewer lines that appeared in comics, but nobody ends up looking well. If Wolverines doesn't take place immediately after Logan Legacy… Why was there some mysterious gap? The WX Team would do it ASAP, and they already had the wolverines in custody. Also, there are points during Wolverines where Laura would've called the ANXM for help. The plot of Wolverines makes no sense if Laura is on an X-Team.

Well… Ok. The real problem is that Wolverines makes almost no sense no matter what you do with it, and was poorly written, poorly illustrated, and oh yeah, sold poorly. Some of the continuity problems I tried to fix in this fic only exist because of other authors actively ignoring Wolverines. So maybe a fix fic for an underperforming canceled crossover line wasn't perfect subject matter. But here we are.

You may have noticed the primary plot hole in canonical comics, as well: What happened to the rift between Laura and the X-Men, specifically Emma Frost?

 **Thank you**

Thanks for reading! I enjoyed writing it. I hope you enjoyed reading it. All feedback is welcome.

Thanks to Catlover18 for editing and putting up with me.


End file.
